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War

Definition: War

War

Noun

1. The waging of armed conflict against an enemy; "thousands of people were killed in the war".

2. A legal state created by a declaration of war and ended by official declaration during which the international rules of war apply; "war was declared in November but actual fighting did not begin until the following spring".

3. An active struggle between competing entities; "a price war"; "a war of wits"; "diplomatic warfare".

4. A concerted campaign to end something that is injurious; "the war on poverty"; "the war against crime".

Verb

1. Make or wage war.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "war" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1010. (references)

 

Specialty Definition: War

DomainDefinition

Satire

WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity. The student of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly boast himself inaccessible to the light. "In time of peace prepare for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means, not merely that all things earthly have an end -- that change is the one immutable and eternal law -- but that the soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination and growth. It was when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure dome" -- when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in Xanadu -- that he heard from afar Ancestral voices prophesying war. One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night. Source: Devil's Dictionary.

19th Century Satire

A wholesale means of making heroes which, if planned in a small way, would produce only murderers. Source: Foolish Dictionary, 1904.

Bible

War The Israelites had to take possession of the Promised Land by conquest. They had to engage in a long and bloody war before the Canaanitish tribes were finally subdued. Except in the case of Jericho and Ai, the war did not become aggressive till after the death of Joshua. Till then the attack was always first made by the Canaanites. Now the measure of the iniquity of the Canaanites was full, and Israel was employed by God to sweep them away from off the face of the earth. In entering on this new stage of the war, the tribe of Judah, according to divine direction, took the lead. In the days of Saul and David the people of Israel engaged in many wars with the nations around, and after the division of the kingdom into two they often warred with each other. They had to defend themselves also against the inroads of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians. The whole history of Israel from first to last presents but few periods of peace. The Christian life is represented as a warfare, and the Christian graces are also represented under the figure of pieces of armour (Eph. 6:11-17; 1 Thess. 5:8; 2 Tim. 2:3, 4). The final blessedness of believers is attained as the fruit of victory (Rev. 3:21). Source: Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary.

Dream Interpretation

To dream of war, foretells unfortunate conditions in business, and much disorder and strife in domestic affairs.
For a young woman to dream that her lover goes to war, denotes that she will hear of something detrimental to her lover's character.
To dream that your country is defeated in war, is a sign that it will suffer revolution of a business and political nature. Personal interest will sustain a blow either way.
If of victory you dream, there will be brisk activity along business lines, and domesticity will be harmonious. Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted ....

Health

Hostile conflict between organized groups of people. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: 1948 Arab-Israeli War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War is called the War of Independence by Israelis and al Naqba, the catastrophe, by Arabs. The War was the first in a series of wars in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This war established the state of Israel as an independent state, with the rest of the British Mandate of Palestine split into areas controlled by Egypt and Transjordan.

Background

Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the League of Nations granted the British a mandate over the former Ottoman possession of Palestine.

This area was the target of Zionist aspirations for a Jewish homeland or state, and thus it saw a large influx of Jewish immigrants escaping persecution in Europe and with them capital. The immigrants, the ruling British, and the Arabs came into conflict many times during the Mandate, most dramatically during the Great Uprising from 1936 to 1939, when Arab general strikes and riots targeted both the British and the Zionists. The British eventually quelled the uprising, with help from the Jewish Haganah.

At the same time, many of the surrounding Arab nations were also emerging from colonial rule. Transjordan, under the Hashemite ruler Abdullah, won independence from Britain in 1946, but it remained under heavy British influence. The British placed Abdullah's half-brother Faisal on the throne in Iraq. The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 included provisisions by which Britain would maintain a garrison of troops on the Suez Canal. From 1945, Egypt attempted to renegotiate the terms of this treaty, which was viewed as a humiliating vestige of colonialism. Lebanon became an independent state in 1943, but French troops would not withdraw until 1946, the same year that Syria won its independence from France. The new Syrian republic, however, feared its own army, which had been organized by the French as a tool against Syrian nationalists. In 1945, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Transjordan, and Yemen formed the Arab League to coordinate policy between the Arab states. Iraq and Transjordan coordinating policies closely, signing a mutual defense treaty, while Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia feared that Transjordan would annex part or all of Palestine, and use it as a basis to attack or undermine Syria, Lebanon, and the Hijaz.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan which partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. Each state would be composed of three major sections, linked by extraterritorial crossroads, plus an Arab enclave at Jaffa. The Greater Jerusalem area would fall under international control. Both Jews and Arabs criticised aspects of the plan. The Jewish population largely welcomed the plan, but the Arab leadership and some Jewish opposition groups rejected it.

Phases of the War

First phase: November 29, 1947 - April 1, 1948

Right after the UN partition plan was approved, heavy fighting broke out in Palestine. The British representatives, having no desire to maintain order and their force waning, effectively left the Jews and Arabs alone to fight between themselves. During the next six months, most of the fighting was be made using guerrilla tactics, small Arab and Jewish forces conducting brief gunfights at various spots, without achieving any territorial goal but for the protection of the de-facto limits.

On December 18 the Palmach, the kibbutz-based force of the Haganah commanded by Moshe Dayan, attacked the village of Khissas. Three weeks later the first Arab irregulars arrived and the Arab leadership began to organize Palestinians in order to wage guerrilla war against the Jewish forces. Some of the Arab fighting groups became the Fedayeen, the forerunners of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Arabs concentrated its efforts on cutting off roads to Jewish settlements and towns with mixed populations. At the end of March, the Arabs had managed to cut off the vital road going from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem where 1/6 of Palestine's Jews lived.

The Arab League created a volunteer army, the Arab Liberation Army, led by Arab nationalist hero Fawzi Al-Qawuqji, which entered northern Palestine in January.

The Haganah armed itself with arms bought from Czechoslovakia. The Yishuv began working on a plan called Plan Dalet (or Plan D).

Second phase: April 1, 1948 - May 15, 1948

Jewish forces were militarily stronger and by May their armies had seized territory that had been assigned to the Palestinian State under the UN Partition Plan. Haganah continued its attacks on civilians. Operation Nachshon, captured the road to Jerusalem, villages along Jerusalem road were attacked and demolished. The April 9 massacre of Arabs at the village of Deir Yassin enflamed public opinion in Arab countries, pushing those countries toward sending regular troops into the conflict.

Meanwhile, frantic diplomatic activity took place between all parties. On May 10, Golda Meir represented the Yishuv in the last of a long series of clandestine meetings between the Zionists and Transjordan's King Abdullah. Whereas for months there had been a tacit agreement between the Zionists and Transjordan to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, with Transjordan taking over the Arab areas, at the May 10 meeting Abdullah offered the Zionists only autonomy within an enlarged Hashemite kingdom. This was unacceptable to the Zionists. Nevertheless, the Transjordanian army refrained from attacking the designated Jewish areas of Palestine in the ensuing war.

On May 13, the Arab League met and agreed to send regular troops into Palestine when the Mandate expired. Abdullah of Transjordan was named as the commander-in-chief of the Arab armies, but the various Arab armies remained largely uncoordianted throughout the war.

Third phase: May 15, 1948 - June 11, 1948

On May 14, the British Mandate expired. The State of Israel declared itself as an independent nation, and was quickly recognized by the Soviet Union, the United States, and many other countries.

Over the next few days, approximately 1,000 Lebanese, 6,000 Syrian, 4,500 Iraqi, 5,500 Egyptian, and 6,000-9,000 Transjordanian troops entered the former Mandate. Together with the few thousand irregular Arab soldiers, they faced a Zionist army numbering 30,000-35,000. Both sides increased their manpower over the following months, but the Zionist advantage grew steadily.

The heaviest fighting would occur in Jerusalem, between Transjordan's Arab Legion and the Israeli forces. Abdullah ordered Glubb Pasha, the commander of the Transjordanian Arab Legion, to enter Jerusalem on May 17, and heavy house-to-house fighting occurred between May 19 and May 28, when the Arab Legion succeeded in expelling Israeli forces from the Arab quarters of Jerusalem. Iraqi troops failed in attacks on Jewish settlements, and instead took defensive positions around Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarm.

During the following months, the Syrian army was repelled, and so were the Palestinian irregulars and the ALA.

In the south, an Egyptian attack was able to penetrate the civilian-manned defences of several Israeli civilian kibutzes, killing their inhabitants. This attack was stopped near Ashdod.

The Israeli militia groups managed not only to maintain their military control of the Jewish territories, but to expand their holdings.

First Truce: June 11, 1948 - July 8, 1948

The UN declared a truce on May 29 which came into effect on June 11 and would last 28 days. The ceasefire was overseen by the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte. An arms embargo was declared with the intention that neither side would make any gains of the truce. But the Israeli side managed to obtain illicit weapons from Czechoslovakia, while Arab forces did not gain significantly more weapons. At the end of the truce Folke Bernadotte presented a new partition plan that would give the Galilee to the Jews and the Negev to the Arabs, both sides rejected the plan. On July 8, Egyptian forces resumed warfare, thus re-starting the fighting.

Fourth phase: July 8, 1948 - July 18, 1948

The ten days at the height of the summer inbetween the two truces was dominated by large scale Israeli offensives and an entierly defensive posture from the Arab side. The three Israeli offensives that were carried out had been carefully crafted during the first truce in anticipation for its end. Operation Dani was the most important one, aimed at securing and enlarging the corridor between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by capturing the roadside cities Lydda (later renamed Lod) and Ramle. In a second planned stage of the operation the periphal cities Latrun and Ramallah was also to be captured.

The second plan was Operation Dekel whos aim was to capture the lower Galilee including the Arab city Nazareth. The third plan, to which fewer resources were allocted to, Operation Kedem was to secure the Old City of Jerusalem. (map of the attacks: [1]).

Operation Dani

Lydda was mainly defended by the Transjordanian Army, but also local Palestinian militias and the Arab Liberation Army was present. The city was attacked from the north via Majdal al-Sadiq and al-Muzayri'a and from the east via Khulda, al-Qubab, Jimzu and Danyal. Bombers were also used for the first time in the conflict to bombard the city. On July 11, 1948 the Zionists captured the city.

The next day, July 12, 1948 Ramle also fell to the Zionists.

July 15-16 an attack on Latrun took place but did not manage to occupy the city. A desperate second attempt occurred July 18 by units from the Yiftach Brigade equipped with armored vehicles, including two Cromwell tanks, but that attack also failed. Despite the second truce which begun on July 18 the Israeli efforts to conquer Latrun continued until July 20.

After Ramle and Lydda had been captured, the Zionist leadership was surprised to see that the inhabitants didn't flee spontaneously. That was a large problem to them as they couldn't leave such a large and hostile population in that area. Therefore some 60,000 inhabitants were forcibly expelled from their homes starting from July 14.

Operation Dekel

While Operation Dani proceeded in the centre, Operation Dekel was carried out in the north. Nazareth was captured July 16 and when the second truce took effect at 19.00 July 18, the whole lower Galilee from Haifa bay to Lake Kinneret was captured by Israel.

Operation Kedem

Originally the operation was to be done on July 8, immidiately after the first truce, by Irgun and Lehi but it was delayed by David Shaltiel possibly because he did not trust their ability after their failure to capture Deir Yassin without Haganah's assistance.

The Irgun forces that was commaned by Yehuda Lapidot (Nimrod) was to break through at The New Gate, Lehi to break through through the wall stretching from the New Gate and the Jaffa Gate and the Beit Hiron Batallion to strike from Mount Zion.

The battle was planned to begin at the Sabbath, 20.00 Friday July 16 a day before the Second Cease-fire of the Arab-Israeli war. The plan went wrong from the beginning and was first postponed first to 23.00 then to midnight. It wasn't before 02.30 that the battle actually begun. The Irgunists managed to break through at the New Gate but the other forces failed in their missions. At 05.45 in the morning Shaltiel ordered a retreat and to cease the hostilities.

Second Truce: July 18, 1948 - October 15, 1948

19.00 July 18, the second truce of the conflict went into effect after intense diplomatic efforts by the UN.

On September 16 Folke Bernadotte proposed a new partition for Palestine in which Transjordan would annex Arab areas including the Negev, al-Ramla, Lydda. A Jewish state in the whole Galilee, internationalization of Jerusalem and return or compensation for refugees. The plan was once again rejected by both sides. On the next day, September 17, Bernadotte was assassinated by the Lehi and his deputy the American Ralph Bunche replaced him.

During the truce the Israelis cleaned up the captured Arab villages. Villages where the Arab population hadn't yet left were cleansed and many of the deserted villages were dynamited for military reasons.

Fifth phase: October 15, 1948 - July 20, 1949

In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 which declared that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so" and that "compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." It was summarily ignored by Israel.

Aftermath

1949 Armistice Agreements

In 1949, Israel signed separate ceasefire agreements with Egypt on February 24, Lebanon on March 23, Transjordan on April 3, and Syria on July 20. Israel was able to draw its own borders, occupying 70% of Mandatory Palestine, fifty percent more than the UN partition proposal allotted them. These borders have been known afterwards as the "Green Line". The Gaza Strip and West Bank were occupied by Egypt and Transjordan respectively.

Demographic Outcome

About 750,000 Arab Palestinian refugees (See Israeli Map, French Map and Israeli Estimate), and more than 600,000 Jewish refugees (See Map and Israeli Estimate), were created during this conflict. Jewish refugees from Arab lands migrated to Israel, while Arab refugees were prevented from settling in neighbouring countries and have remained in refugee camps up to the time of writing. (For more on the flight of Palestinians, see Palestinian exodus.)

The humiliation of the Arab armies at having been routed by the Jewish forces, together with the rising nationalist frenzy in Arab nations, contributed to rising hatred for the Jews living in Arab lands. The status of Jews in Arab states varied greatly from state to state. Some observers wish to maintain that the Jewish populations were more "prevented from leaving" than "expelled". Their civil liberties, too, were in many cases vastly inferior to of their Muslim fellow citizens. For example, in Yemen, Jews were and are prohibited from carrying weapons of any type, even to the point of prohibiting traditional ceremonial Yemeni knives, carried by a large portion of the Yemeni population. The net result was that after over two thousand years of living in Arab controlled countries, the atmosphere was sufficiently anti-Jewishly charged that almost to a man, entire communities of Jews in the hundreds of thousands felt they had no option but to take leave of old homes and move to the uncertainties of the new Jewish state of Israel in effect becoming "refugees" in everything but name. These fears were compounded by the Holocaust, which took place three years before the founding of the state of Israel.

Arabs Palestinians have staged annual demonstrations and protests on May 15 of each year, one day after the anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence. The popularity and number of participants in these annual al Naqba demonstrations has varied over time, though the increasing anti-Israeli sentiment in the Middle East has tended to increase the attendance in recent years. During the al-Aqsa Intifada incited by the PLO after the failure of the Camp David 2000 Summit, the attendance at the demonstrations against Israel have increased exponentially.

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2003 invasion of Iraq

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

nds:Irakorlog

The 2003 invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003, when a large force of United States and British troops invaded Iraq, leading to the collapse of the Ba'athist Iraqi government in about three weeks and the start of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Ground forces from Australia and Poland and naval forces from Denmark and Spain also took part. The international community was divided on the legitimacy of this invasion; see worldwide government positions on war on Iraq.

The start of hostilities came after the expiration of a 48-hour deadline which was set by U.S. President George W. Bush, demanding that Saddam Hussein and his two sons Uday and Qusay leave Iraq, ending the diplomatic Iraq disarmament crisis.

The U.S. name for the military campaign was Operation Enduring Freedom. The US military operations in this war were conducted under the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The UK military operations in this war were conducted under the name of Operation Telic. The Australian codename was Operation Falconer.

The United States, with support from approximately 45,000 British, 2,000 Australian and 200 Polish combat forces, entered Iraq primarily through their staging area in Kuwait. Coalition forces also supported Iraqi Kurdish militia troops, estimated to number upwards of 50,000. Included in these forces were groups of Australia SAS and Commando Personnel who performed Recon and combat search and rescue mission along side American and British SF units.

Timeline of the invasion

See 2003 invasion of Iraq timeline for a detailed timeline

The invasion was notably swift, with the collapse of the Iraq government and the military of Iraq in about three weeks. The oil infrastructure of Iraq was rapidly secured with limited damage in that time. Securing the oil infrastructure was considered important in order to prevent Saddam Hussein's forces from destroying it (as happened in 1991, creating environmental and economic problems).

Casualties of the invading forces were limited, while Iraqi military and civilian casualties are unknown, probably at least in the thousands. A study from the Project on Defense Alternatives ( http://www.comw.org/pda/ ), a Boston-based think tank, numbered the Iraqi casualities between 11,000 and 15,000 ( http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/0310rm8.pdf ), and the Iraq Body Count project numbered the civilian Iraqis injured in 20,000 ( http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial_aug0703.htm ).

The U.S. Third Division moved westward and then northward through the desert toward Baghdad, while the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and a UK expeditionary force moved northward through marshland. UK forces secured Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, following two weeks of conflict, although their control of the city was limited. Preexisting electrical and water shortages continued through the conflict and looting began as Iraqi forces collapsed. While British forces began working with local Iraqi Police to enforce order, humanitarian aid began to arrive from ships landing in the port city of Umm Qasr and trucks entering the country through Kuwait.

Three weeks into the invasion U.S. forces moved into Baghdad with limited resistance, Iraqi government officials either disappeared or conceded defeat. Looting took place in the days following. It was alleged that many items in the National Museum of Iraq were amongst those things looted. The F.B.I. was soon called into Iraq to track down the stolen items. However, it has been found that the initial claims of looting of substantial portions of the collection were somewhat exaggerated. Yet, as some of the dust has settled, thousands of antiquities are still missing including 30 invaluable objects from the main collection.

There has been speculation that some objects still missing were not taken by looters after the war, but were taken by Saddam Hussein or his entourage before or during the fighting. There have also been reports that early looters had keys to vaults that held the more rare pieces and speculation of systematic removal of key artifacts. The arts and antiquities communities warned policymakers in advance of the need to secure the museums. Despite the looting being somewhat less bad than initially feared, the cultural loss of items from ancient Sumeria is significant. The accusation that US forces did not guard the museum because they were guarding the Ministry of Oil and Ministry of Interior is apparently true. The reality of the situation on the ground was that hospitals needed guarding, water plants needed guarding, and ministries with vital intelligence inside needed guarding. There were only enough US troops on the ground to guard a subset of everything that ideally needed guarding, and so some "hard choices" were made.

In the north Kurdish forces under the command of U.S. Special Forces captured oil-rich Kirkuk on April 10. On April 15, U.S. forces mostly took control of Tikrit.

As areas were secured, coalition troops began searching for the key members of Saddam Hussein's regime. These individuals were identified by a variety of means, most famously through sets of most wanted Iraqi playing cards.

George W. Bush announced, with great fanfare and a banner stating "Mission Accomplished", the end of major combat on May 1, 2003. However, this did not mean that peace returned to Iraq. The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq thereupon commenced, marked by ongoing violent conflict between the Iraqi and the occupying forces. As of Novermber 15, 2003, the total deaths of American soldiers in the Iraq war since march have reached 400. Of these the majority has been killed after the end of major hostilities on May 1. There is concern being voiced from domestic quarters comparing the situation to previous wars such as the Vietnam War.

The ongoing resistance in Iraq is concentrated in, but not limited to, an area known as the Sunni triangle and Baghdad [1]. Critics point out that the regions where violence is most common are also the most populated regions. This resistance may be described as guerilla warfare. The tactics used thus far include mortars, suicide bombers, roadside bombs, small arms fire, and RPGs, as well as purported sabotage against the oil infrastructure. There are also accusations about attacks toward the power and water infrastructure, but these are rather questionable in nature. In the only widely covered example of what some considered an attack on the power system, two US soldiers were killed, indicating that they may instead have been the target. In the purported attack against a water main, some witnesses reported seeing an explosion on the pipe, but US soldiers and repair crews on the scene stated that it did not appear to have been caused by an explosion.

There is evidence that some of the resistance is organized, perhaps by the fedayeen and other Saddam Hussein or Baath loyalists, religious radicals, Iraqis simply angered over the occupation, and foreign fighters. [1]

Events leading to the invasion

In September 2000, in the Rebuilding America's Defenses report [1], the Project for the New American Century planned an attack on Iraq, independently of whether or not Saddam Hussein remained in power. One year later, on the day of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is reported to have written in his notes, "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]". Shortly thereafter, the George W. Bush administration announced a War on Terrorism, accompanied by the doctrine of preemptive military action dubbed the Bush doctrine. In 2002 the Iraq disarmament crisis arose primarily as a diplomatic situation. In October 2002, the United States Congress granted President Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq was worded so as to encourage, but not require, UN Security Council approval for military action. In November 2002, United Nations actions regarding Iraq culminated in the unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and the resumption of weapons inspections. The United States also began preparations for an invasion of Iraq, with a host of diplomatic, public relations and military preparations.

Payoff of Iraqi Military

Shortly after the sudden collapse of the defense of Baghdad, rumors were circulating in Iraq and elsewhere that there had been a deal struck (a "safqua") wherein the US had bribed key members of the Iraqi military elite and/or the Baath party itself to stand down. These rumors were ignored or treated dismissively in the US media and among the US public.

In late May, 2003, General Tommy Franks announced his retirement. Shortly thereafter, he confirmed in an interview with Defense Week that the US had paid Iraqi military leaders to defect. The extent of the defections and their effect on the war were not clear as of this writing (May 24, 2003).

Invasion justification and goals

The stated justification for the invasion included Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction, links with terrorist organizations and human rights violations in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein government. To that end, the stated goals of the invasion, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were: to end the Saddam Hussein government and help Iraq transition to representative self-rule; to find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction and terrorists; to collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists; to end sanctions and to deliver humanitarian support; and to secure Iraq's oil fields and resources.

No weapons of mass destruction have been reported as found as of September 21, 2003, though Saddam Hussein's government collapsed, former Palestine Liberation Front leader Abu Abbas was captured, and the oil fields and resources were rapidly secured but have since suffered continued sabotage.

After the fall of Baghdad, U.S. officials claimed that Iraqi officials were being harbored in Syria, and several high-ranking Iraqis have since been detained after being expelled from Syria.

Support and opposition

See Support and opposition for the 2003 invasion of Iraq for the full article.

The Bush administration claimed that the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq included 49 nations, a group that was frequently referred to as the "coalition of the willing". These nations provided combat troops, support troops, and logistical support for the invasion. The nations contributing combat forces were, roughly: United States (250,000), United Kingdom (45,000), Australia (2,000), Denmark (200), and Poland (54). Ten other countries were known to have offered small numbers of noncombat forces, mostly either medical teams and specialists in decontamination. In several of these countries a majority of the public was opposed to the war. In Spain polls reported at one time a 90% opposition to the war.

Popular opposition to war on Iraq led to global protests, and the war was criticized by Belgium, Russia, France, the People's Republic of China, Germany, and the Arab League.

There are some that claim the US intervention took place without any international legal framework. Others would counter by pointing out that the UN Security Council Resolutions authorizing the 1991 invasion gave legal authority to use "...all necessary means...", which is diplomatic code for going to war. This war ended with a cease fire instead of a permanent peace treaty. Their view was that Iraq had violated the terms of the cease-fire by breaching two key conditions and thus made the invasion of Iraq a legal continuation of the earlier war. To support this stance, one has to "reactivate" the war resolution from 1991; if a war resolution can be reactivated ten years after the fact, it would imply that almost any nation that has ever been at war that ended in a ceasefire (such as Korea) could have the war restarted if any other nation felt at any time that they were no longer meeting the conditions of the cease fire that ended that war. Since the majority of the United Nations security council members (both permanent and rotating) did not support the attack, it appears that they viewed the attack as not being valid under the 1991 resolution.

However, a resolution drafted and accepted the year before the invasion fully endorsed the use of military action to force Iraq to comply with the United Nations desires, and every country that sat upon the Security Council voted to draft that resolution.

Several nations say the attack violated international law as a war of aggression since it lacked the validity of a U.N. Security Council resolution to authorize military force. The Egyptian former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called the intervention a violation of the UN charter.

The United States and United Kingdom claim it was a legal action which they were within their rights to undertake. Along with Poland and Australia, the invasion was supported by the governments of several European nations, including the Czech Republic, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, and Spain.

Many people regarded the attack on Iraq to be hypocritical, when other nations such as Israel are also in breach of UN resolutions and have nuclear weapons; this argument is controversial [1].

Although Iraq was known to have pursued an active nuclear weapons development program previously, as well tried to procure materials and equipment for their manufacture, these weapons and material have yet to be discovered. This casts doubt on some of the accusations against Iraq. However, some believe that the weapons were moved into Syria and Lebanon.

Related slogans and terms

This campaign has featured a variety of new and weighted terminology, much coined by the U.S. government and then repeated by the media. The name "Operation Iraqi Freedom", for example, expresses one viewpoint of the purpose of the invasion. Also notable was the exclusive usage of "regime" to refer to the Saddam Hussein government (see also regime change), and "death squads" to refer to fedayeen paramilitary forces. Members of the Hussein government were called by disparaging nicknames - e.g., "Chemical Ali" (Ali Hassan al-Majid), "Comical Ali" (Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf), "Mrs Anthrax" (Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash) - for propaganda purposes and because Western peoples are unfamiliar with Arabic names.

Other terminology introduced or popularized during the war include:

Media coverage

Media coverage of this war was different in certain ways from that of the Gulf War. The Pentagon established the policy of "embedding" reporters with military units. Viewers in the United States were able to watch U.S. tanks rolling into Baghdad live on television, with a split screen image of the Iraqi Minister of Information claiming that U.S. forces were not in the city. Many foreign observers of the media and especially the television coverage in the USA felt that it was excessively partisan and in some cases "gung-ho"

Another difference was the wide and independent coverage in the World Wide Web demonstrating that for web-surfers in rich countries and the elites in poorer countries, the internet has become mature as a medium, giving about half a billion people access to different versions of events.

However, the coverage itself was intrinsically biased by the fact that internet penetration in Iraq was already very weak (estimate of 12,000 users in Iraq in 2002 [1]), and the deliberate destruction of Iraqi telecommunication facilities by US forces made internet communication even more difficult. Different versions of truth by people who have equal ignorance of first-hand, raw data are by definition a very biased substitute for original, first-hand reports from people living locally.

Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network, which was formed in 1996, gained a lot of worldwide attention for its coverage of the war. Their broadcasts were popular in much of the Arab world, but also to some degree in western nations, with major American networks such as CNN and MSNBC re-broadcasting some of their coverage. Al-Jazeera was well-known for their graphic footage of civilian casualties, which American news media branded as overly sensationalistic. The English website of Al-Jazeera was brought down during the middle of the Iraq war by hackers who saw its coverage as casting a negative view on the American cause.

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American Civil War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)


Stainless Banner, adopted on May 26, 1863 by Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory. (compare Stars and Bars)

The American civil war was fought in the United States of America between the northern states, popularly referred to as the "Union", and the seceding southern states (in the U.S., The South), calling themselves the Confederate States of America or the "Confederacy" between 1861 and 1865.

While there is considerable debate about the influence of individual events that led the states to war, the following events are often cited as contributing:

There is little question that the salient issue in the minds of the public and popular press of the time, and the histories written since, was the issue of slavery. Slavery had been abolished in most northern states, but was legal and important to the economy of the Confederacy, which depended on cheap agricultural labor. State sovereignty (for the South) and preservation of the Union (for the North) have both also been cited as issues, but both were reflections of the slavery issue, i.e., could the Federal government force southern states to end slavery or could the southern states leave the Union to preserve slavery?

These names are infrequently used today, but the war was also known in the South as The War Between the States, The War of Northern Aggression, The War of Southern Independence, Mr. Lincoln's War, or simply as The War. More obscure names for the war include The Second American Revolution and The War in Defense of Virginia. Northerners often referred to it as The War of the Rebellion, The War to Save the Union, or The War for Abolition.

The states which seceded consisted of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Three 'slave states' did not secede: Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. Although Kentucky did not secede, it declared itself neutral in the conflict. Delaware and Maryland were garrisoned by Union forces throughout the war to prevent their secession. Missouri's government split, with a Unionist government in the capitol and a secessionist government-in-exile run from Camden, Arkansas and Marshall, Texas. The state of West Virginia was created by the secession from Virginia of its northwestern counties, and added to the Union in 1863.

The Union was led by President Abraham Lincoln and the Confederacy by President Jefferson Davis.

Historical Summary

It started with Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860, which triggered South Carolina's secession from the Union. Leaders in the state had long been waiting for an event that might unite the South against the antislavery forces. Once the election returns were certain, a special South Carolina convention declared "that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states under the name of the 'United States of America' is hereby dissolved." By February 1, 1861, six more Southern states had seceded. On February 7, the seven states adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America. The remaining southern states as yet remained in the Union.

Less than a month later, on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president of the United States. In his inaugural address, he refused to recognize the secession, considering it "legally void". His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union. The South, particularly South Carolina, ignored the plea, and on April 12, the South fired upon the Federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter in the Charleston, South Carolina until the troops surrendered.


Abraham Lincoln
16th President
(1861-1865)

As a Confederate force was built up by July 1861 at Manassas, Virginia, a march by Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell on the Confederate forces there, was halted in the First Battle of Bull Run, or First Manassas, whereupon they were forced back to Washington, DC by Confederate troops under the command of Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard. Alarmed at the loss, and in an attempt to prevent more slave states from leaving the Union, the United States Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution on July 25 of that year which stated that the war was being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.

Major General George McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 (he was briefly given supreme command of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favor of Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862. Ulysses S. Grant gave the Union its first victory of the war, by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee on February 6 of that year.

McClellan reached the gates of Richmond in the spring of 1862, but when Robert E. Lee defeated him in the Seven Days Campaign, he was relieved of command of the Army of the Potomac. His successor, John Pope, was beaten spectacularly by Lee at Second Bull Run in August. Emboldened, the Confederacy's made its first invasion of the North, when General Lee led 55,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River at White's Ford near Leesburg, Virginia into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored McClellan, who won a bloody, almost Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. Lee's army, checked at last, returned to Virginia.

When McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside suffered near-immediate defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and was in his turn replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army, and was relieved after the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. He was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade, who stopped Lee's invasion of Union-held territory at what is sometimes considered the war's turning point, the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), inflicting 28,000 casualties on Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and again forcing it to retreat to its namesake state.

While the Confederate forces had some success in the Eastern theater holding on to their capital, fortune did not smile upon them in the West. Confederate forces were driven from Missouri early in the war.


Jefferson Davis
First and only President of the Confederate States of America

Nashville, Tennessee fell to the Union early in 1862. The Mississippi was opened, at least to Vicksburg, with the taking of Island No. 10 and New Madrid, Missouri and then Memphis, Tennessee. New Orleans was captured in January, 1862, allowing the Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi as well.

The Union's key strategist and tactician was Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at Fort Donelson, Battle of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee. Grant understood the concept of total war and realized, along with Lincoln, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces would bring an end to the war.

At the beginning of 1864, Grant was given command of all Union armies. He chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac although Meade remained the actual commander of that army. Union forces in the East attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles during that phase of the Eastern campaign: the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. An attempt to outflank Lee from the South failed under Generals Butler and Smith, who were 'corked' into the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Grant was tenacious and kept pressing the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee. He extended the Confederate army, pinning it down in the Siege of Petersburg and, after two failed attempts (under Siegel and Hunter), finally found a commander, Philip Sheridan, who could clear the threat to Washington DC from the Shenandoah Valley.

Meanwhile General William Tecumseh Sherman marched from Chattanoga on Atlanta and laid waste to much of the rest of Georgia after he left Atlanta and marched to the sea at Savannnah. When Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina to approach the Virginia lines from the south, it was the end for Lee and his men, and for the Confederacy.

Advantages widely believed to have contributed to the Union's success include:

Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on 9 April 1865 at Appomattox Court house. Joseph E. Johnston, who commanded Confederate forces in North Carolina, surrendered his troops to Sherman shortly thereafter. The Battle of Palmito Ranch, fought on May 13, 1865, in the far south of Texas was the last land battle of the war and ended with a Confederate victory. All Confederate land forces had surrendered by June 1865. Confederate naval units surrendered as late as November of 1865.

Major Battles

Major battles included First Bull Run, Second Bull Run, Battle of Shiloh, The Seven Days, Antietam, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the Siege of Petersburg. A naval battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia was the first battle in history between steam-powered, iron-armored ships with shell-firing guns. The Union's naval blockade of the Confederate coast was one of the most ambitious up to that time, and was the first major blockade under the Declaration of Paris of 1856.

See also: List of American Civil War battles

Civil War Leaders

Significant Southern leaders included Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, James Longstreet, P.G.T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart, and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Northern leaders included Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, George B. McClellan, Henry W. Halleck, Joseph Hooker, Ambrose Burnside, George McClellan, Irvin McDowell, Philip Sheridan, George Crook, George Armstrong Custer, Christopher "Kit" Carson, John E. Wool, George G. Meade, and Abner Read.

Aftermath

During the War, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves held in territory under Confederate control at the time of the Proclamation. Slaves were not freed in the remaining states and parts of the Confederacy until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment by 3/4 of the states, which did not occur until December of 1865, 8 months after the end of the war. A good deal of ill will among the Southern survivors resulted from the resulting shift of political power to the North, the destruction inflicted on the South by the Union armies as the end of the war approached, and the Reconstruction program instituted in the South by the Union after the war's end.

According to data from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the last surviving Union veteran of the conflict, Albert Woolson, died on August 2, 1956 at the age of 109, and the last Confederate veteran, John Salling, died on March 16, 1958 at the age of 112. However, William Marvel investigated the claims of both for a 1991 piece in the Civil War history magazine Blue & Gray. Using census information, he found that Salling was born in 1858, far too late to have served in the Civil War. In fact, he concluded, "Every one of the last dozen recognized Confederates was bogus." He found Woolson to be the last true veteran of the Civil War on either side; he had served as a drummer boy late in the war.

See also: American Civil War spies, Emancipation Proclamation, CSS Hunley, Jim Crow laws, Ku Klux Klan and Reconstruction.

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Dominion War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Dominion War is a war between the Dominion and Cardassians on one side, and the Alpha Quadrant alliance of the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, and the Romulans. The latter portion of the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine focused on this war.

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers.

Background

In 2369, the Cardassian occupation of the planet Bajor ended, the Cardassians having been driven off by various Bajoran resistance factions. These factions then formed a provisional government to oversee the rebuilding of the planet, which had been ecologically, culturally, and financially devastated by the occupation. One of its first official acts was to ask The United Federation of Planets for assistance in this monumental task.

The UFP responded by sending Commander Benjamin Sisko to take command of the space station Terok Nor, an orbital ore processing facility left behind by the Cardassians. This station was re-christened Deep Space Nine, and was to become a diplomatic and commercial center for Bajor. Sisko was tasked by Captain Jean-Luc Picard to do everything, short of violating the Federation's Prime Directive, to ensure that Bajor rebuilt itself enough to win entry into the Federation.

However, not long after the UFP's arrival, Sisko, along with science officer Jadzia Dax discovered a stable wormhole connecting Bajoran territory to the Gamma Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy, nearly 70,000 light years away, a distance unattainable by any sentient race extant using conventional means. In order to protect Bajoran interests the station was moved from the orbit of Bajor to a point close to the Alpha Quadrant terminus of the wormhole.

It was also discovered that the wormhole is actually home to aliens known to the Bajorans as The Prophets--beings which exist in only one point in space (the wormhole) but all points in time, giving them a very non-linear view of the universe, where effect can precede cause. They, for unrevealed reasons, adopted Sisko as their emissary to the Bajoran people. Sisko didn't like this iconic role, especially since he was treated with religious reverence by the Bajoran people, but eventually learned to accept it, and use it from time to time to further the Federation's goal of helping Bajor to rebuild.

First Contact

Exploration of the Gamma Quadrant took place without major incident for nearly one year. However, on a seemingly routine trade mission by the Ferengi, Quark first heard whispers of the Dominion, which apparently was a union of civilizations similar to the Federation in its goals of mutual defense and trade practices. Quark, under the aegis of Grand Nagus Zek, was authorized to negotiate a trade agreement with the Dominion which was ultimately successful.

However, as races from the Alpha Quadrant began to colonize planets in the Gamma Quadrant and make their presence known to Gamma Quadrant species, disturbing reports about the Dominion began to emerge. The reports seemed to indicate that what the Dominion could not attain through trade would be taken by force. These reports were borne out in 2370 when a huge fleet of Skrreean ships appeared in the Alpha Quadrant, in search of a new homeworld after their old home had been utterly destroyed by Dominion forces.

Toward the end of 2370, Sisko, his son Jake, Quark, and Quark's nephew Nog were visiting an uninhabited Gamma Quadrant planet to do a planetary survey for a school project of Jake and Nog's. It was here that the Jem'Hadar, the Dominion's elite military forces were encountered, and Sisko and Quark were captured by these forces, along with a mysterious alien (later to be identified as a Vorta) named Eris. The Jem'Hadar then sent a representative to DS9 to inform the Alpha Quadrant that no further intrusions into Dominion space would be tolerated, and gave Major Kira Nerys a list of colonies and starships already destroyed for trespassing.

The UFP responded by sending a rescue team consisting of the USS Odyssey, a Galaxy class starship, and all three of DS9's runabouts. They managed to pull off the rescue (Eris included), but got into a fierce battle with Jem'Hadar ships, and the Odyssey was destroyed, with all hands lost when a Jem'Hadar ship made a kamikaze attack upon it. The remaining forces returned to the Alpha Quadrant, where it was discovered Eris was a spy, and Sisko's capture engineered by the Founders, the shadowy ruling class of The Dominion. Once discovered, Eris managed to escape DS9 using transporter technology seemingly far more advanced than Alpha Quadrant species had been able to develop. (Episode: "The Jem'Hadar")

Contact with the Founders

Early in 2371 Sisko returned to Earth for a Starfleet debriefing on the matter, returning to the space station commanding the USS Defiant, a prototype battle cruiser originally developed to fight the Borg, but modified with a Romulan cloaking device to enter the Gamma Quadrant on a peace mission to locate the Founders.

And find the Founders they did, discovering that they are the same race as Odo, DS9's shapeshifting chief of security. Despite a strong longing to return to his home, he found his people's philosophy--that what you can control cannot hurt you--abhorrent. After a short standoff between Federation and Dominion forces, Odo asked to be returned to the Alpha Quadrant with all Federation forces intact. The Founders, led by a character identified only as "the female shapeshifter" (played by Salome Jens), acquiesced to Odo's request, in the hopes that Odo will one day rejoin his people. (Episode: "The Search") This marked the beginning of a Cold War phase between the Federation and Dominion, with limited skirmishes between the two sides, and a steady buildup of military forces.

Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar attack on the Founder homeworld

Meanwhile, the other Alpha Quadrant powers were not sitting still in the face of the threat from The Dominion. The Obsidian Order, a covert Cardassian intelligence force led by Enabran Tain, allied themselves with the Tal Shiar, the Romulan equivalent of the Order. Together, they secretly built a huge fleet of starships in the Orrias sector of Cardassian space, and launched a preemptive strike against the Founders' homeworld, hoping that the Dominion would collapse with the loss of the Founders.

However, the Founders, using their shapeshifting abilities, had infiltrated both groups and actually encouraged the strike, the better to launch a surprise attack and in one stroke, wipe out both the Order and the Tal Shiar. The Dominion stunned the galaxy with this plan, leaving only the UFP and the Klingon Empire as the remaining powers strong enough to stand up to the Dominion. (Episode: "The Die is Cast")

Founder infiltration and conflict with the Klingons

Late in 2371, it was learned that the Founders had infiltrated nearly every major power in the Alpha Quadrant, and the ensuring paranoia about who might or might not be a shapeshifter led to the Klingon invasion of Cardassian territory in 2372. With the fall of the Obsidian Order, the Cardassian citizenry had legitimately overthrown the militaristic government, putting a civilian based government in place. However, the Klingons didn't accept the sudden change in government, and suspected Dominion involvement. Their refusal to break off their invasion, even after it had been proven that the Dominion was not involved, led newly-promoted Captain Sisko to a military confrontation with the Klingons, as the Klingons, under Chancellor Gowron and General Martok attempted to seize DS9. The attack was repulsed--barely--but caused the Klingons to sever all diplomatic relations with the Federation, and to withdraw from the Khitomer Accords, essentially ending decades of peace between the UFP and the Klingon Empire. This seemed to further the Founders goal of destabilization of the Alpha Quadrant as a prelude to their own invasion. (Episode: "The Way of the Warrior")

The paranoia over shapeshifters continued throughout 2372, and certain Starfleet officers responded by trying to implement a coup d'état of the Federation after it was learned that shapeshifters had infiltrated Earth. This led to armed conflict between Starfleet vessels for the first time--since Khan Noonien Singh hijacked the USS Reliant--when Defiant and the USS Lakota exchanged fire. In the nick of time, Sisko was able to force Admiral Leyton to abandon his efforts to impose martial law on the Federation by convincing him to step down and face criminal charges. (Episode: "Paradise Lost")

Tensions between the UFP and the Klingon Empire continued to rise, and war broke out between the two in late 2372 over the Federation's refusal to recognize the Klingon's claim to the Archanis sector. However, the Empire could not effectively fight a war on two fronts, as the Cardassians, in mid-2373 and under the leadership of Gul Dukat (the former prefect of Terok Nor), officially became a member state of the Dominion. This gave the Founders a solid foothold in the Alpha Quadrant, and the Cardassians, who were nearly wiped out by the Klingon invasion, were able to drive the Klingons out of Cardassian space, inflicting heavy losses upon Klingon forces in doing so. With The Dominion now firmly entrenched in the Alpha Quadrant, the Klingon Empire re-affirmed the Khitomer Accords, ending the brief war between the Empire and the UFP. (Episode: "By Inferno's Light")

The Dominion now began sending massive fleets of ships through the wormhole to bolster their presence in the Alpha Quadrant, and to reinforce Cardassian positions. The Federation and Klingon Empire decided that this was an untenable situation, and built a field of space mines at the mouth of the wormhole on the Alpha Quadrant side that were self-replicating and fitted with Klingon cloaking devices. This effectively cut off the Dominion's supply lines to the Alpha Quadrant. However, Gul Dukat and his Dominion advisor, the Vorta Weyoun, considered this an act of war, and launched an attack on Deep Space Nine itself. This battle is generally accepted as the true beginning of the Dominion War. (Episode: "Call to Arms")

Full-Scale War

Dominion occupation of Deep Space Nine

Cardassian and Dominion forces launched their attack on Deep Space Nine to wrest control of the station from the Federation. As UFP and Klingon forces were at the time launching their own raids on several key Dominion shipyards, this attack was successful, and the UFP was forced to abandon the station. However, under advisement from Captain Sisko, the Bajoran government had signed a treaty of non-aggression with the Dominion, and this allowed Bajoran forces to remain on the station. (episode: "Call to Arms") In 2374, while Dukat and Weyoun were trying to figure out a way to safely dismantle the minefield, Major Kira Nerys began her own resistance movement on the station, sowing discord between the Cardassians and Jem'Hadar on the station, particularly between Dukat's second-in-command Damar and Dominion forces. (episode: "Behind the Lines")

In the late spring of 2374, Sisko was able to convince the top brass in Starfleet that the key strategic point of the conflict would not be any one planet, but rather Deep Space Nine itself, so a large fleet of about 1,200 starships was assembled to re-take the station. However, Dominion forces outnumbered the Federation fleet by nearly 3-to-1, and Dukat was very close to dismantling the minefield. (Episode: "Favor the Bold") With nothing left to lose, the Federation launched its assault, and with timely intervention by the Klingons, the Defiant was able to break through Dominion lines and make it to the wormhole just as the minefield was taken down. In a desperate attempt to delay the thousands of ships ready to pour through the wormhole, Sisko asked the Prophets to intervene. They did so, causing the Dominion reinforcements to simply disappear. With Cardassian morale broken, they abandoned the station, and the UFP once again took control. The Federation victory by deus ex machina cost Dukat his sanity, and Damar was put in his place as the Cardassian head of state, though he was much more a Dominion puppet than Dukat. (Episode: "Sacrifice of Angels")

After the recapture of DS9

Even with the Dominion leery of sending any more ships through the wormhole, the combined forces of the Klingon Empire and the UFP were barely holding their own. The Romulans, who had publicly declared their neutrality in the conflict were actually letting Dominion ships fly through their territory in order to make attacks upon the other two major Alpha Quadrant powers. After Dominion forces invaded and captured the planet Betazed, Sisko was convinced, and desperate, that the Klingon/UFP alliance would lose the Dominion War. He then connived, with the assistance of Garak, the only Cardassian with permanent residence on DS9 (and former master spy for the Obsidian Order), to plant false evidence of a Dominion plot to assassinate the Romulan proconsul. The Romulans bought the ploy, and allied themselves with the Federation and Klingons, thus improving the prospects of victory immensely. (Episode: "In the Pale Moonlight")

Around the same time of the alliance with the Romulans, DS9's chief medical officer, Doctor Julian Bashir was made aware of the existence of Section 31, a covert intelligence agency, similar to the Obisidian Order, within the Federation. Section 31 seemed intensely interested in manipulating the war behind the scenes and tried to recruit Bashir into their ranks. Bashir refused, informed Sisko of Section 31's existence, and adopted a "wait and see" attitude. (episode: "Inquisition")

With the Romulans' assistance, the Alpha Quadrant Alliance was able to take from the Dominion the strategically important Chin'Toka system in early 2375, though science officer Jadzia Dax was murdered by Gul Dukat. (episode: "Tears of the Prophets") The Dax symbiont however survived despite the death of its host body, and was joined with a new host to become Ezri Dax. Ezri was posted to DS9 as the station's counselor. (episode: "Afterimage")

Section 31, meanwhile, had also been busy behind the scenes. They managed to infect Odo with a virus that he then unknowingly communicated to the rest of the Founders by merging his form with that of the female shapeshifter's. The disease began to take its toll on the Founders in mid-2375, seriously damaging their ability to lead the war effort. (Episode: "Treachery, Faith, and the Great River") Gul Damar, too, was growing increasingly frustrated with the seemingly stalemated war and his own position as a Dominion puppet. As Cardassian military losses mounted, he began to drink heavily, and often criticized the Dominion's ability to prosecute the war successfully.

The Dominion's position became increasingly precarious, causing the female shapeshifter to form an alliance with the Breen, a relatively unknown space-faring species in the Alpha Quadrant. Their entry into the struggle temporarily turned the tide of the war back to the Dominion's favor. (Episode: "'Til Death Do Us Part") Breen vessels were equipped with a power draining weapon that rendered both UFP and Romulan vessels completely inert. Klingon vessels were largely unaffected, however. With nearly two-thirds of the Alliance's fleet unable to fight against the Breen, the Dominion was able to stabilize its front lines, and re-take the Chin'Toka system, destroying Defiant in that battle. Breen and Jem'Hadar forces also managed to stage a lightning raid on Earth itself, destroying many Starfleet facilities as well as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. (Episode: "The Changing Face of Evil")

The Klingons, now at the front lines of the battle almost completely alone, were instructed by Alliance commanders merely to hold the front while Alliance scientists tried to figure out a way to counter the Breen's energy draining weapon. General Martok complied with these orders, but the leader of the Klingon Empire, Chancellor Gowron began to fear that Martok's military prowess would eclipse his own. He stripped command of the war from Martok and assumed leadership himself, often placing Martok in no-win battles and throwing the Alliance's lines into chaos with increasingly dangerous missions in an attempt to cover himself in personal glory. The situation reached a head when DS9's strategic operations officer, Worf, challenged Gowron's leadership in open council. Per Klingon tradition, this meant a duel to the death between the two. Worf killed Gowron in this fight, and the remaining council leaders crowned Worf the new Chancellor of the Klingon Empire. Worf, however, refused this honor, giving it instead to Martok. With the Klingon political landscape somewhat stabilized after decades of chaos, the war once again turned to near-stalemated conditions. (episodes: "When it Rains..." and "Tacking Into the Wind")

Final Assault and Fall of Cardassia

With the Dominion now giving more and more important military decisions, and even a few Cardassian colonies, to the Breen, Gul Damar, with the assistance of newly-promoted Colonel Kira Nerys and Garak, began his own underground resistance movement in an attempt to drive the Dominion out of Cardassian space. Damar was branded a rebel by the Dominion and went into hiding.

Around this time, Alliance scientists were finally able to find a way to defeat the Breen's special weapon, and it was decided that the Alliance was now in a position to take Cardassia itself, given that the Dominion was distracted by Damar's rebellion. The USS São Paulo was re-christened to become the second starship Defiant, with Sisko in command. A three-pronged strike led by Sisko, Chancellor Martok, and Admiral William Ross invaded Cardassian space in an all-or-nothing offensive. (Episode: "Dogs of War")

Damar's attempts at fomenting a popular uprising against the Dominion was wildly successful, finally causing the Dominion to destroy an entire Cardassian metropolis, killing about two million Cardassians. This atrocity caused most Cardassian fleet captains to switch sides, aiding the Alliance's invasion of Cardassian space.

The Founders, facing extinction themselves, abandoned all pretense of being anything but polymorphic supremacists bent on imposing their version of order on the entire galaxy. Thus, they swore they would not surrender, promising a scorched earth war wherein any territory the Alliance managed to take would be so badly damaged, and so many people killed that Alliance victory would hardly be worth the effort. When the female shapeshifter discovered the treachery of the Cardassian fleet, she ordered the Jem'Hadar to exterminate the entire Cardassian race. Thus while Alliance--and Cardassian--starships fought for control of Cardassia Prime from space, the planet itself was being devastated by Jem'Hadar shock troops on the ground. A pyrrhic victory seemed inevitable for the Alliance, as nearly a billion Cardassian civilians were already dead. (Episode: "What You Leave Behind, Part I")

However, Julian Bashir and DS9's chief engineer Miles O'Brien had managed to take the cure for the Section 31 created Founder's disease from the mind of one of its operatives. (episode: "Extreme Measures") The cure was given to Odo, who then rushed to Cardassia Prime. In exchange for the Dominion's peaceful surrender, and the arrest of its Founder, Breen, and Vorta leaders for war crimes, the Alpha Quadrant Alliance allowed Odo to cure the Founders of their disease. A formal declaration of the cessation of hostilities was proclaimed in a ceremony aboard DS9, thus ending a conflict that had consumed nearly three-quarters of the galaxy for nearly seven years. (episode: "What You Leave Behind, Part II")

The Aftermath

The fallout from that war goes mostly undocumented. The political ramifications are immense, as nearly every major Alpha Quadrant power, from the Federation to the Ferengi, underwent a dramatic shift in power. Cardassia lies in ruins, in far worse shape than what the Cardassians themselves did to the planet Bajor, and billions of people gave their lives in the struggle. Odo returned to the Founder's homeworld to teach them about the other races in the galaxy in an attempt to reform Founder society. The deceit which brought the Romulans into the war is still undiscovered.

Although not directly connected to the series, the Star Trek computer game Star Trek: Bridge Commander takes place shortly after the Dominion War and shows some of the would-be political implications of the war.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Dominion War."

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English Civil War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The English Civil War (correctly the British Civil War) was a civil war fought between King Charles I, his supporters, and the Long Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell. It began in the Summer of 1642 and continued until early 1649, when Charles I was tried and executed by members of Parliament.

It is often simply referred to in Britain as the "civil war", sometimes leading to confusion with the American Civil War. It was not, however, the only civil war ever fought in England or Britain. (See List of English civil wars). It is sometimes referred to as the "English Revolution" and (especially in Royalist circles) as "the Great Rebellion".

Prelude to the English Civil War

Looking back on the events leading the to civil war, one would not imagine that it could have ever taken place. It was less than forty years since the death of Queen Elizabeth. After her, England in the era of Charles I was a fairly peaceful place, and had been so in living memory. Charles had real hope of fulfilling his father's, James I of England (James VI of Scotland), dream of uniting the entirety of the British Isles in a single United Kingdom. Charles also shared his father's feelings in regard to the power of the crown, which James had described as "little Gods on Earth", or "Divine Right of Kings". Although pious and with little personal ambition, Charles demanded outright loyalty in return for "just rule". Any questioning of his orders was insulting, at best. It was this later trait and a series of events that tested it, seemingly minor on their own, that led to a serious break between Charles and the Parliment, eventually leading to war.

Prior to the English Civil War, Parliament was not a permanent branch of English government, but temporary advisory committees summoned by the English monarch whenever additional tax revenue was required, and subject to dissolution at the monarch's will. Because responsibility for collecting taxes was in the hands of the English gentry, the English monarchs needed their help in order to guarantee that revenue came in without difficulty. If the gentry were to refuse to collect the King's taxes, the King would be powerless to compel them. Parliaments allowed representatives of the gentry to meet, converse and send policy proposals to the King (in the form of Bills). These representatives did not, however, have any means to force their will upon the King.

Mounting Concern

One of the first events to cause concern about Charles I was his marriage to a French Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, shortly after his accession to the throne in 1625. These royal marriages were commonplace at the time, but his choice of a Catholic cast him in the role of potential Papist among the small but powerful Puritan minority in Parliment, who made up around one third of the members.

A potentially more troublesome issue was Charles' insistance in joining the wars raging in Europe, which he saw as something of a holy crusade. This alone might not have been a problem, except that Charles had placed his own "favourite", George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in command. Parliment was rather suspicious of Buckingham, who they had to deal with under James as well, and eventually they decided to support the war effort only on the provisio that Buckingham could be be recalled if he did not perform. The Parliament of 1625 then granted him the right to collect customs duties only for a year and not, as was usual, for his entire reign. After a disastrous raid on France, Parliament dismissed Buckingham in 1626, and Charles, furious at what he considered insolence, dismissed the Parliament.

Petition of Right

Having disolved Parliament, and being unable to raise money without Parliament, the king assembled a new one in 1628. Among the members elected was Oliver Cromwell. The new Parliament drew up the Petition of Right in 1628, and Charles accepted it as a concession to get his subsidy. Amongst other things the Petition referred to the Magna Carta and said that a citizen should have: (a) freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, (b) freedom from non-parliamentary taxation, (c) freedom from the enforced billeting of troops, and (d) freedom from martial law.

However Charles was determined to rule without summoning another Parliament, and this required him to devise new means of raising extraordinary revenue. Among the most controversial of these was the revival and extension of ship money. This tax had been levied in the medieval era on seaports, but Charles extended it to inland counties as well. As a levy for the Royal Navy, ship money was, according to Charles and his supporters, needed for the defence of the realm therefore within the legitimate scope of the royal prerogative.

The tax had not been approved by Parliament, however, and a number of prominent men refused to pay it on these grounds. Reprisals against Sir John Eliot, one of the prime movers behind the Petition of Right, and the prosecution of William Prynne and John Hampden (who were fined after losing their case 7-5 for refusing to pay ship money, taking a stand against the legality of the tax) aroused widespread indignation. Charles' use of the Court of Star Chamber in this issue also served to anger many, as the court had always been seen as the citizenry's last appeal against the monarch's power, and was now apparently being used against them.

The Eleven Years' Tyranny

Charles I managed to avoid a Parliament for a decade, a time known as the "Eleven Years' Tyranny". This policy broke down when he provoked a series of disastrous and expensive wars against the Scots: the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640.

Charles believed in a pomp-and-ceremony version of the Church of England, a feeling held by his main political advisor, Archbishop William Laud. Laud had become the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 and started a series of reforms in the Church to make it more ceremonial, starting with the replacement of the wooden communion tables with stone altars. Puritans accused Laud of trying to reintroduce Catholicism, and when they complained Laud had them arrested. In 1637 John Bastwick, Henry Burton and William Prynne had their ears cut off for writing pamphlets attacking Laud's views - a rare penalty for gentlemen to suffer, and one that aroused anger.

To make matters worse, Laud and Charles both agreed that a necessary first step to true unification of Scotland and England was to introduce a common prayer book. The Scots reacted explosively when it was introduced in the spring of 1638, and sought to purge bishops from the Scots church altogether. It took a year, but Charles raised an army in 1639 and sent it north to end the rebellion. After a disastrous skirmish he decided to seek a truce, the Pacification of Berwick, and was humiliated by being forced to agree not only to not to interfere with religion in Scotland, but to pay the Scottish war expenses as well.

Recall of Parliament

Charles needed to suppress the rebellion in his northern realm, he was, however, insufficiently funded and was forced to seek money from a recalled Parliament in 1640, whose numbers included Robert Blake. Parliament took this appeal for money as an opportunity to discuss grievances against the Crown; moreover, they were opposed to the military option. Charles took exception to this lese majesté and dismissed the Parliament; the name "the Short Parliament" was derived from this summary dismissal. Without Parliament's support, Charles attacked Scotland again and was comprehensively defeated; the Scots, seizing the moment, took Northumberland and Durham.

Meanwhile another of Charles's chief advisers, Thomas Wentworth, had risen to the role Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1632 and brought peace to the island by forming an alliance of Roman Catholics against the Protestants. In 1639 he had been recalled to England and in 1640 granted the title Earl of Strafford, as Charles attempted to have him work his magic again in Scotland. This time he was not so lucky, and the English forces fled the field in their second encounter with the Scots in 1640.

The Long Parliament

In desperate straits, Charles was obliged to summon Parliament again in November of 1640; this was the "Long Parliament". None of the issues raised in the Short Parliament had been addressed, and again Parliament took the opportunity to raise them, refusing to be dismissed. Under the leadership of John Pym and John Hampden, a law was passed which stated that Parliament should be reformed every three years, and refused the king's right to dissolve Parliament. Other laws were passed making it illegal for the king to impose his own taxes, and later passed a law that gave members control over the king's ministers.

With Ireland apparently peaceful after Strafford's able administration of eight years, Charles thought he saw a way out -- Strafford had raised an Irish Catholic army and was prepared to use it against Scotland. Of course the very thought of a Catholic army campaigning against the Scots from protestant England was considered outrageous by the parliamentary party. In early 1641 Strafford was arrested and sent to the Tower of London on the charge of treason. John Pym made the claim that Wentworth's statements of being ready to campaign against "the kingdom" were in fact directed at England itself. The case could not be proven, so the House of Commons, led by John Pym and Henry Vane, resorted to a Bill of Attainder. Unlike treason, attainder required only the burden of proof, but it also required the king's signature. Charles, still incensed over the Common's handling of Buckingham, refused. Strafford himself, hoping to head off the war he saw looming, wrote to the king and asked him to reconsider. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was executed on May 12th, 1641.

Instead of saving the country from war, Wentworth's sacrifice in fact doomed it to one. Within months the Irish Catholics, fearing a resurgence of Protestant power, stuck first and the entire country soon decended into chaos. Rumors started that the Irish were being supported by the king, and Puritan members of the Commons were soon agitating that this was the sort of thing Charles had in store for all of them.

On January 4, 1642, Charles attempted to arrest 5 members of the Parliament (John Hampden, John Pym, Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Holles, and William Strode) on a charge of treason; this attempt failed, however, as they had been tipped off and gone into hiding prior to the arrival of the king's troops. When the troops marched into Parliament the officer in charge demanded of the Speaker where the five were. The Speaker replied that he 'had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear save as this house [the Commons] directs me.' In other words, the Speaker was a servant of Parliament, rather than of the King. Parliamentary supporters took to arms to protect the five men as they escaped across London.

The First English Civil War

The English Parliament, having controverted the king's authority, raised an army led by Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. The purpose of this army was twofold: it was to defeat both an invasion from Scotland and also the attempts by the king and his supporters to restore the monarchy's power. Charles I, in the meantime, had left London and also raised an army using the archaic system of a Commission of Array. He raised the royal standard at Nottingham in August.

In 1642 the military governor of Kingston upon Hull, Sir John Hotham declared the city for the Parliamentarian cause and refused the King entry into the city and its large arsenal. Charles took great personal affront to this act, and declared Hotham a traitor. Charles I besieged the city unsuccessfully. This siege precipitated open conflict between the Parliamentarian and Royalist causes.

At the outset of the conflict, although the Royal Navy and most English cities favoured Parliament, the King found considerable support in rural communities; however much of the country was neutral. It is thought that between them both sides had only in the region of 15,000 men. However, the war quickly spread and eventually involved every level of society throughout the British Isles. Many areas attempted to remain neutral but found it impossible to withstand both the King and Parliament. On one side the king and his supporters fought for traditional government in Church and state. On the other, supporters of Parliament sought radical changes in religion and economic policy, and major reforms in the distribution of power at the national level. In addition, Parliament was not the united front portrayed in much of later history. At one point in the nine years of war there were more members of Parliament and Lords in the King's parliament than there were at Westminster.

Parliament did, however, have more resources at its disposal, due to its possession all major cities including the large arsenals at Hull and London. For his part, Charles hoped that quick victories would negate Parliament's advantage in material, which precipitated the first battle, the first siege of Hull in July 1642 which provided a decisive victory for Parliament.

A latter battle at Edgehill was inconclusive, but regarded by the Royalists as a victory. One of the king's outstanding leaders was his nephew, Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, a dashing cavalry commander. Playing a minor part in the battle on the other side was a cavalry troop raised by a country gentleman, evangelical puritan, and former Member of Parliament named Oliver Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell was later to devise the New Model Army system still evident in military organisation today. This was characterised by a unified command structure and professionalism, which would firmly swing military advantage towards Parliament. The second action of the war was the stand-off at Turnham Green which saw Charles forced to withdraw to Oxford. This was to be his base for the remainder of the war.

In 1643 the Royalist forces won at Adwalton Moor and gained control of most of Yorkshire. Subsequent victories in the west of England at Lansdowne and at Roundway Down also went to the Royalists. Prince Rupert then was able to take Bristol. In the same year, Oliver Cromwell formed his troop of "Ironsides", a disciplined unit which demonstrated his military ability. With their assistance, he was victorious at the Battle of Gainsborough in July.

After an inconclusive battle at Newbury in September, on October 11, 1643, the Parliamentarian army won the Battle of Winceby giving them control of Lincoln. Political manoeuvring on both sides now led Charles to negotiate a ceasefire in Ireland, freeing up English troops to fight on the Royalist side, while Parliament offered concessions to the Scots in return for aid and assistance.

Parliament won at Marston Moor in 1644, gaining York with the help of the Scots. Cromwell's conduct in this battle was decisive, and marked him out as a potential political as well as a military leader. The defeat at the Battle of Lostwithiel in Cornwall, however, was a serious reverse for Parliament in the south-west of England.

In 1645 Parliament reorganized its main forces into the New Model Army, under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Cromwell as his second-in-command and Lieutenant-General of Horse. In two decisive engagements, the Battle of Naseby on June 14 and at Langport on July 10, Charles's armies were effectively destroyed.

Capture of Charles

Left with little recourse, Charles fled north, seeking refuge with the Scots in 1646 after disbanding his forces. This was the end of the First English Civil War.

Charles was ransomed by Parliament and held captive at Holdenby House whilst Parliament drew up plans. In the meantime, Parliament began to demobilize and disband the army. The army was unhappy about issues such as arrears of pay and living conditions and resisted the disbandment. Eventually the army kidnapped Charles in an attempt to negotiate using their hostage as a bargaining piece. He spent three months at Hampton Court Palace, before escaping to the Isle of Wight, where he was recaptured and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Increasingly concerned, the army marched to London in August 1647 and debated proposals of their own at Putney.

The Second English Civil War

Charles took advantage of this deflection of attention away from him to negotiate a new agreement with the Scots, again promising church reform on December 28, 1647. Although Charles himself was still a prisoner, this agreement led inexorably to the "Second Civil War".

A series of royalist rebellions and a Scottish invasion in July 1648 took place. All were defeated by the now powerful standing army. This betrayal by Charles caused Parliament to debate whether Charles should be returned to power at all. Those who still supported Charles's place on the throne tried once more to negotiate with him. Unpaid parliamentarian troops in Wales changed sides; the revolt was firmly put down by Cromwell.

Furious that Parliament were still countenancing Charles as a ruler, the army marched on parliament and conducted "Pride's Purge" (named after the commanding officer of the operation, Thomas Pride). 45 Members of Parliament (MPs) were arrested; 146 were kept out of parliament. Only 75 were allowed in, and then only at the army's bidding. This Rump Parliament was ordered to set up a high court of justice in order to try Charles I for treason in the name of the people of England.

Trial of Charles for Treason

Although Cromwell had some difficulty in finding judges to take part, in 1648, by a 68 to 67 vote, the Parliament found Charles I of England guilty of treason, being a "tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy". He was executed at the Palace of Whitehall in 1649. The majority of those who signed his death warrant were themselves executed or imprisoned upon the later Restoration of the Monarchy.

Ireland and Scotland

Thanks to former Member of Parliament Admiral Robert Blake blockading Prince Rupert's fleet in Kinsale, Oliver Cromwell was able to land at Dublin on August 15, 1649 with the army to quell Royalist forces in Ireland, and later in Scotland (1649-1650) to finally restore an uneasy peace. Resistance continued in Scotland under the valiant James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, whose forces were finally defeated at Carbisdale on April 27, 1650, and Montrose was ignominiously executed.

Not all resistance had yet died out. Charles II was crowned in Scotland, claiming that the throne was rightfully his. Cromwell beat the Scottish Royalists at Dunbar on September 3, 1650, but was unable to prevent Charles from marching deep into England. Cromwell finally engaged the new king at Worcester on September 3, 1651, and beat him. Charles II fled abroad, ending the civil wars. The Commonwealth of England was then established, with Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of England.

The victory made him very unpopular in Scotland and Ireland which, as nominally independent nations, were effectively conquered by English forces. In particular, Cromwell's suppression of the Royalists in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong resonance for many Irish people. The massacre of nearly 3,500 people in Drogheda after its capture -- comprising around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and all the men in the town carrying arms, including civilians, prisoners, and Catholic priests -- is one of the historical memories that has driven Irish-English and Catholic-Protestant strife during the last three centuries.

Aftermath

It's estimated that around 10% of the British population may have died during the civil wars. As was usual in war, more deaths were caused by disease than by combat.

The wars left Britain as the only country in Europe without a monarch. In the wake of victory many of the ideals, and many of the idealists, were set aside. England, and later all of Britain, was ruled by the republican government of the Commonwealth of England during 1649 - 1653 and 1659 - 1660. Between the two periods, and due to infighting amongst various factions in parliament, Oliver Cromwell ruled over The Protectorate as Lord Protector, effectively a military dictator, until his death.

While the monarchy was subsequently restored, the civil wars effectively set Britain on course to become a parliamentary democracy, and help it avoid the later European republican movements that followed Napoleon's victory in 18th century France. Specifically, future monarchs became wary of pushing Parliament too hard, while in 1662 Parliament's factions became political parties (later becoming the Tories and Whigs) with competing views and the ability to influence decisions of the monarch.

Theories relating to the English Civil War

Throughout the greater part of the 20th century, two schools of thought dominated theoretical explanations of the Civil War: the Marxists and the 'Whigs'. Both of them explained the English seventeenth century in terms of long-term trends.

Whigs explained the Civil War as the result of a centuries-long struggle between Parliament, especially the House of Commons, and the monarchy. Parliament fought to defend the traditional rights of Englishmen, while the monarchy attempted on every occasion to expand its right to dictate law arbitrarily. The most important Whig historian, S.R. Gardiner, popularized the idea that the civil war could be described as the 'Puritan Revolution' which challenged the repressive nature of the Stuart church and paved the way for the religious toleration of the restoration. Puritanism, in this view, was the natural ally of a people seeking to preserve their traditional rights against the arbitrary power of the monarchy.

The Marxist school of thought, which became popular in the 1940s, interpreted the Civil War as a bourgeois revolution. In the words of Christopher Hill, "the Civil War was a class war." On the side of reaction was the landed aristocracy and its ally, the established church. On the other side were (again, according to Hill) "the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside, to the yeomen and progressive gentry, and to wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about." The Civil War was the point in English history at which the wealthy middle classes, already a powerful force in society, liquidated the outmoded medieval system of English government. Like the Whigs, the Marxists found a place for the role of religion in their account. Puritanism was a moral system that ideally suited the bourgeois class, and so the Marxists idenitified puritans as inherently bourgeois.

Beginning in the 1970s, a new generation of historians began mounting challenges to the Marxist and Whig theories. This began with the publication in 1973 of the anthology "The Origins of the English Civil War" (edited by Conrad Russell). These historians disliked the way that Marxists and Whigs explained the Civil War in terms of long-term trends in English society. The new historians called for, and began producing, studies which focussed on the minute particulars of the years immediately preceding the war, thus returning in some ways to the sort of contingency based historiography of Clarendon's famous contemporary history of the civil war. As a result, they have demonstrated that the pattern of allegiances in the war did not fit the theories of Whig and Marxist historians. Puritans, for example, did not necessarily ally themselves with Parliamentarians, and many of them were not bourgeois; many bourgeois fought on the side of the King; many landed aristocrats supported Parliament.

The new generation of historians (who are commonly called 'Revisionists') have discredited large sections of the Whig and Marxist interpretations of the war. They have not, however, supplied a single coherent explanation of their own. Revisionism is a set of scholarly principles rather than a school of thought.

Re-enactments

There are two large historical societies, The Sealed Knot and The English Civil War Society, that regularly re-enact events and battles of the Civil War in full period costume.

See also

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Finnish War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Finnish War was fought between Sweden and Russia from February 1808 to September 1809. As a result of the war Finland became an autonomous grand duchy under the Russian tzar.

Background

In the treaty of Tilsit in 1807 Napoleon and the Russian tzar Alexander I decided that Russia should force Sweden to join the Continental System.

The war

On February 21, 1808 Russian troops crossed the border. At the same time southern Sweden was threatened by an attack from Denmark. The plan of the Swedish army under Johan Adam Cronstedt was to retreat into Ostrobothnia leaving only the strongly fortified Sveaborg behind. The fort surrendered although there was enough ammunition and food to last several months.

Under a new commander Carl Johan Adlercreutz, the Swedish army counter-attacked and halted the Russian offensive at the Battle of Siikajoki. Although the Swedes were successful for a while they didn't receive the reinforcements that were needed. Adlercreutz fought a defensive battle at Oravais, but lost and was forced to retreat. The day before Georg Carl von Döbeln had won the legendary Battle of Jutas.

On November 19 the convention of Olkijoki was signed and the Swedish army was forced to leave Finland.

Battles

Major commanders

Aftermath

The Finnish war was finished with the treaty of Fredrikshamn on September 17, 1809.

See also: Finnish Civil War, Lands of Sweden, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, War and Peace in Russia, 1796-1825

The Winter War is sometimes called the Russo-Finnish War.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Finnish War."

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First Opium War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

zh-cn:第一次鸦片战争

The First Opium War was a trade-inspired war between the United Kingdom and the Qing Empire in China from 1839 to 1842. It is often seen as the first display of European military superiority over the Chinese. This conflict led to a long string of anti-Western sentiment from the Chinese, that arguably continues to this day.

Trading goods from China were extremely lucrative for Europeans, but suffered from one major problem: China was so large and reasonably well-developed that it was difficult to find products that the Chinese wished to import. Silver was one, to the extent that the drain on European specie metals was noticeably affecting the economy. Casting about for other possibilities, opium was discovered. Between 1821 and 1837 imports of the drug increased five-fold.

The Chinese government attempted to end this trade, on public health grounds --numerous opium addicts were appearing in trading ports throughout China. The effort was largely successful, with the official in charge of the effort Lin Zexu, eventually forcing the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China, Charles Elliott to hand over all remaining stocks of opium for destruction in May 1839.

However, the next month two British sailors murdered a Chinese man, and were tried under the principle of extraterritoriality: the sailors were brought to justice in a British court in Canton (Guangzhou). The Chinese, however, demanded that the principle be abrogated and the two men handed over to Chinese custody.

Refusing, the British were expelled from China. Preparing for war, they seized Hong Kong (then a minor outpost) as a base. Fighting began in July, when the HMS Volage and HMS Hyacinth defeated 29 Chinese ships. The next year, the British captured the Bogue forts which guarded the mouth of the Pearl River -- the waterway between Hong Kong and Canton. By January 1841, their forces commanded the high ground around Canton, then defeated the Chinese at the nearby city of Ningpo (modern-day Ningbo) and the military post of Chinhai.

By the middle of 1842, the British had defeated the Chinese at the mouth of their other great trading river, the Yangtze, and had occupied Shanghai. The war finally ended in August 1842, with the Treaty of Nanking.

The treaty committed the Chinese to free trade, including that of opium. Hong Kong island was ceded to the UK, and the Treaty Ports of Canton, Amoy (Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Shanghai, and Ningpo were opened to all traders. Reparations were also paid by the Chinese.

The ease with which the British forces had defeated the Chinese armies seriously affected the Qing dynasty's prestige. This almost certainly contributed to the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1862). For the victors, the Opium War paved the way for the opening up of the lucrative Chinese market and Chinese society for missionary purposes.

See Also

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First War against Napoleon

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The First War against Napoleon was the first involvement by Sweden in the Napoleonic Wars. Sweden joined the Third Coalition by declaring war on France on October 1 1805. The hostilities ended after a ceasefire at Schlatkow on September 7, 1807 and the War was concluded by the Treaty of Paris on January 6, 1810.

See also: Second War against Napoleon, List of Swedish wars, Absolute monarchy in Sweden

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "First War against Napoleon."

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Franco-Prussian War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)


Battle of Mars Le Tour Larger image
The Franco-Prussian War (July 19, 1870 - May 10, 1871) was waged between the Empire of France and the Kingdom of Prussia. The conflict marked the culmination of tension between the two powers following Prussia's rise to dominance in Germany, still a loose federation of quasi-independent territories.

The immediate cause of the war was the candidacy of the German prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen for the Spanish throne, which had been vacant since the revolution of September 1868. Asked by the French to guarantee for Leopold's permanent withdrawal also in the future, King William of Prussia declared the matter outside his control. His telegram (the Ems Dispatch) reporting this interview with the French ambassador was edited by chancellor Bismarck of Prussia in such a way as to provoke French indignation. France officially declared war on July 19, 1870.

Against French expectations, the south German states, independent from Prussia but connected to it by secret treaties, joined the war.

The French were soundly defeated in several battles owing to the military superiority of the Prussia forces and their commanders. At Sedan on September 2, the French emperor Napoleon III was taken prisoner with 100,000 of his soldiers. This led two days later to a bloodless revolution in Paris, ending the Second French Empire, and leading to the creation of a new government of national defence.

A further crushing French loss came at Metz, where Marshal Bazaine surrendered 180,000 soldiers on October 27. An armistice was signed on January 28, 1871, ten days after William's proclamation as German emperor at Versailles.

However, the National Guard and the workers of Paris refused to accept defeat, blaming the conservative government for failing to organise effective national resistance, and seized control of the French capital on March 18, establishing the Paris Commune. With tacit Prussian support, the French army re-conquered Paris and executed tens of thousands of workers and revolutionaries in the "Bloody Week" (May 21-28).

The preliminary Franco-German peace signed at Versailles (February 26) was confirmed by the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871). France was obliged to cede three eastern départements (until 1919 the Prussian province of Alsace-Lorraine) and to pay a war indemnity of 2000 million francs. German troops remained in parts of France until the last instalment of the indemnity was paid off in September 1873.

While the war united Germany under the Prussian crown, France became a republic (February 1875) in which memories of the Commune continued to divide left and right. Also as a result of the war, the Papal States, no longer under French protection, were seized (September 20, 1870) by Italy, completing the unification of that country.

The war embittered Franco-German relations for decades to come, contributing to the European rivalries which would erupt in World War I. French agitation for revanche - revenge for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine - gave its name to the phenomenon of revanchism, the desire to punish a past enemy and regain former territories.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Franco-Prussian War."

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History of Croatia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

This is the history of Croatia. See also history of Europe, and history of present-day nations and states.

The area known as Croatia today was first inhabited in the early Neolithic period. In recorded history, it was colonized first by the Celts and later by the Illyrians. Illyria was a sovereign state until the Romans conquered it in 168 B.C. Forebears of Croatia's current Slav population settled there in the 7th century.

Medieval Croatian state

The Croats arrived from the north around the year 600 -- the exact date is not known. They were Christianized in the 9th century under Duke Porin, although they were never obliged to use Latin -- rather, they had masses in their own language and used the Glagolitic alphabet (only later did the Latin alphabet prevail). The first written mention of Croats was in a statute by Duke Trpimir from 852. The country was recognized by Pope John VIII as an independent dukedom under Branimir in 879.

The first King of Croatia, Tomislav of the Trpimir dynasty, was crowned in the Duvno field in 925 (note that sources vary from 923 to 928). Tomislav united the Pannonian and Dalmatian duchys and created a sizeable state, including most of today's Central Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, and most of Bosnia. The central town of the Duvno field is nowadays named Tomislavgrad (Tomislavtown) in his honor.

History also recalls the name of king Dmitar Zvonimir through the Baška Tablet where his kinghood is carved in stone (1075-1089). The stone was preserved until today and is kept in the archaeological museum in Zagreb. Zvonimir's reign is remembered as a peaceful and prosperous time, during which the connection of Croats with the Pope was further affirmed, so much that Catholicism would remain among Croats until the present day.

After the death of Zvonimir, Croatian lords struggled for independence from Hungary. After the death of the last Croat king Petar Svačić at the Gvozd hill in 1097, they recognized Ladislav I as the common king for Croatia and Hungary in a treaty called "Pacta Conventa" (1102), thus making a personal union with Hungary. The two crowns would remain connected until the end of World War I.

Union with Hungary

The change of ruling dynasty had several important consequences. Among them was the fact that the Hungarian king introduced a variant of the feudal system, and granted large feuds to individuals who would defend them against outside incursions, thereby organizing a defence of the whole state. However, by enabling the nobility to seize more and more economic and military power, the kingdom itself lost influence to the Frankapan, Šubić, Nelipčić, Kačić, Kurjaković, Drašković, Babonić and other families. The later kings sought to restore their influence by giving certain privileges to the towns, making them Royal Borroughs or Free Royal Towns, which they defended from the feudal lords in return for their support.

The princes of Bribir from the Šubić family became particularly influential during the time of Pavao Šubić (1272-1312) who asserted control over large parts of Dalmatia, Slavonia and Bosnia during an internal conflict between the Arpad and Anjou ruling dynasties. Later, however, the Anjouvines intervened and scattered the Šubić family accross the country (an important offspring being the Zrinski family), and later even selling the whole of Dalmatia to Venice in 1409.

As the Turkish incursion into Europe started, Croatia was once again a border area between two major forces in this part of the world. While Croats under fra Ivan Kapistran contributed to the Christian victory over the Ottomans at Belgrade in 1456, they suffered a major defeat in the battle of Krbava field (in Lika, Croatia) in 1493 and gradually lost increasing amounts of territory to the Ottoman Empire.

Pope Leo X called Croatia the forefront of Christianity in 1519, given that several Croatian soldiers made significant contributions to the struggle against the Turks. Among them there were ban Petar Berislavić who won a victory at Dubica on the Una river in 1513, the captain of Senj Petar Kružić who defended the Klis fortress for 15 years, captain Nikola Jurišić who deterred by a magnitude larger Turkish force on their way to Vienna in 1532, or ban Nikola Šubić Zrinski who helped save Pest from occupation in 1542.

Habsburg Empire

Before the 1526 Battle of Mohacs, the Hungarian dynasty was extinguished, and the Hungarian nobility elected the Austrian Ferdinand Habsburg king. During the next 200 years, the Ottoman Empire was a constant threat.

Taking advantage of the growing conflict between Maximilian and Sigismund, Suleyman started his sixth raid of Hungary in 1565 with 150,000 troops. They successfully progressed northwards until 1566 when they took a small detour to capture the outpost of Siget (Sigetvar) which they failed to capture back in 1556. The small fort was defended by count Nikola Zrinski with some 2500 men. They were able to hold their ground for a month, killed Suleiman himself and decimated the Ottoman army before being wiped out themselves, which allowed for the Austrian troops to regroup before the Turks could reach Vienna.

The negative effects of feudalism escalated in 1573 when the peasants in northern Croatia and Slovenia rebelled against their feudal lords over various injustices such as unreasonable taxation or abuse of women. Ambroz Matija Gubec and other leaders of the mutiny raised peasants to arms in over sixty fiefs throughout the country in January 1573, but their uprising was crushed by early February. Matija Gubec and thousands of others were publically executed shortly thereafter, in a rather brutal manner in order to set an example for others.

In 1578, large areas of Croatia and Slavonia adjacent to the Ottoman Empire were carved out into the Military Frontier (Vojna Krajina) and ruled directly from Vienna. Due to the dangerous vicinity of the Ottoman armies, the area became rather deserted, so Austria encouraged the settlement of Serbs, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenes/Ukrainians and other Slavs in the Military Frontier, creating an ethnic patchwork.

The Turkish conquests were the most successful in the 16th century, when only small parts of Croatia remained unconquered, and were referred to as the remnants of the remnants of the once great Croatian kingdom. After the Battle of Sisak in 1593, when the Ottoman army was successfully repelled for the first time on the territory of Croatia, the lost territory was mostly restored, except for large parts of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the 1700s, the Ottoman Empire was driven out of Hungary and Croatia, and Austria brought the empire under central control.

After a victory of the Austrian royal army of the Turks in 1664, emperor Leopold failed to capitalize on it and signed the peace of Vasvar in which Hungary and Croatia were prevented from regain their territory previously lost to the Ottoman Empire. This caused unrest among the Hungarian and Croatian novelty which plotted against the emperor, but they weren't powerful enough to actually do something about it, even though they negotiated with both the French and the Turks. The imperial spies uncovered the conspiracy and on April 30, 1671 executed four esteemed Croatian and Hungarian noblemen involved in it, Petar Zrinski, F. K. Frankopan, F. Nadasdy and E. Tatenbach, in Wiener Neustadt.

Croatia was one of the crownlands that supported emperor Karl's pragmatic sanction of 1713 and supported the empress Maria Theresia in the War of Austrian Succession of 1741-1748. Subsequently, the empress made significant contributions to the Croatian matters, by making several changes in the administrative control of the Military Frontier, the feudal and tax system. She also gave the independent port of Rijeka to Croatia in 1776. However, she also ignored and eventually disbanded the Croatian Parliament and in 1779, Croatia was relegated to just one seat in the governing council of Hungary, held by the ban of Croatia.

The governments of Austria and Hungary each tried to colonize Croatia over a period of several centuries: they imposed their languages on the Croatian people and immigrated many of their own colonists to Croatia. Croatian romantic nationalism emerged to counteract the non-violent but apparent Germanization and Magyarization. The Croatian national revival began in the 1830s with the Illyrian Movement. The movement was misnamed (some wrongly thought that they descended from the ancient Illyrians rather than the Slav settlers), but it still attracted a number of influential figures and produced some important advances in the Croatian language and culture.

By the 1840s, the movement had moved from cultural goals to resisting Hungarian political demands. In 1868, Croatia was given domestic autonomy, but the governor was appointed by Hungary, 55% percent of all tax money went to Budapest and Hungary had authority over the biggest sea port of Rijeka. Struggle towards more independence within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was interrupted by the World War I.

First Yugoslavia

Shortly before the end of the Great War, on October 29, 1918, the Croatian Parliament severed relations with Austria and Hungary as the Allied armies defeated Austria-Hungary's. Shortly thereafter, they created the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, with the intent of pursuing a joint state of all south Slavs previously in Austria-Hungary.

This state wasn't barely organized and rather weak compared to its neighbours. Italy retained the Istrian peninsula, the city of Zadar and the island of Lastovo after the war, and had pretentions on the whole Adriatic coast, if not more. The Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro which were part of the winning alliance were also interested in Austria-Hungary's old territory.

The People's Council (Narodno vijeće) of the State, guided by what was by that time a half a century long tradition of pan-Slavism, chose cooperation with the eastern Slav neighbours and joined Serbia and Montenegro in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on December 1, 1918. The new country was ruled by the Serbian dynasty of Karađorđević and had a Parliament (Skupština) with representatives from all regions.

The Croats expected better treatment from their Slav brothers than they would expect from a possible Italian rule, but they were soon stripped of political power in royal Yugoslavia. Croat parties were but a significant parliamentary minority and were limited to leading the opposition, whereas the Serbian parties formed majority governments with the help of several Muslim and Catholic parties (Yugoslav Muslim JMO, Albanian/Turkish Cemiyet, Slovene-Bunjevatz clericals).

On Vidovdan 1921, a crucial change in the constitution was passed which made the country centralized (and the center was in Belgrade, Serbia) and intentionally completely rewrote the internal region borders which resulted in Serbs being the majority in most of the regions. The vote was boycotted by representatives from almost all of the parties from Croatia: the Croatian Republican Peasants' Party (HRSS), the Republican Party and the Socialdemocrat Party.

The HRSS and its leader Stjepan Radić opposed the new state from the very beginning, and were later prosecuted by the new government. Radić was detained in 1925 and released only after the party officially declared it supports the new country, and renamed itself to lose the Republican from the name. Their dissent was seemingly entirely eliminated when Radić joined the government of Nikola Pašić in 1925, but this lasted only until 1927. Radić's HSS then formed a coalition with the Independent Democratic Party led by Svetozar Pribičević, a party of Serbs from the western parts of the country, thereby getting a chance to lead the country. In 1928 the coalition received a mandate to create a new government, but failed to form it.

The turning point was June 20th, 1928, when Stjepan Radić was mortally wounded by a Serb deputy, Puniša Račić in the middle of a Parliament session. Radić died on August 8 and an estimated 300,000 people gathered on his funeral in Zagreb on August 12.

The royal establishment used the newly created turmoil to continue with its centralization of power. On January 6th, 1929, King Aleksandar proclaimed a dictatorship and suspended the Parliament. Several political parties were banned, including the Croatian Peasants' Party. The right-most party Croatian Party of Rights was also banned and went underground to organize the radical-right Ustaše movement.

Yugoslavia continued on its path towards a completely militarist society, arming for possible war with its neighbours Italy and Bulgaria. On October 3rd, 1929, the king divided the country into nine provinces (banovina) and renamed it to Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The king imposed a new constitution in 1931 and held new elections for the parliament, but with a single allowed candidate list.

In 1934, Macedonian radicals in exile assassinated king Aleksandar in Marseille, reportedly with the support of the Croat extremists as well. The country continued to be ruled by Karađorđević king, young Petar, but under the aegis of a royal committee. The country remained centralized, and even though the dissenting parties appeared in the elections, the electoral law and procedure was very undemocratic.

Independent State of Croatia

Croatia received some autonomy in 1939 when the provinces were shuffled so that there was one called the Croatian banovina comprised of Croatia, Dalmatia, and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, this didn't last for long because lacking the leadership of a strong king, the militarist regime in Belgrade crumbled in 1941 and the Axis powers quickly occupied Yugoslavia.

The Croat populace supported the abolishment of Yugoslavia, but didn't realize what kind of a replacement was in store for them. Hitler and Mussolini installed the Croatian Ustaše into power, forming the so-called "Independent State of Croatia". The puppet regime in Croatia enacted racial laws, formed eight concentration camps and started a campaign to exterminate Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

The anti-fascist movement emerged early in 1941, under the command of Communists like Josip Broz Tito, as in other parts of Yugoslavia. The partizan guerillas gradually received support from an increasing amount of population and by the end of the world war, with the help of the Soviet Union's Red Army, Tito's partisans expelled the quislings (Nazi collaborators).

Later in the war Ustaše opened up a large complex of five concentration camps near Jasenovac in which up to a hundred thousand people were murdered (some estimate that this camp was the third largest camp of WWII). Overall Ustaša death count is estimated at over 400,000 people, but all written records were destroyed to cover it up. Serbian royalist guerilla Četnici were ostensibly formed in some parts of this puppet state by Serb villagers to protect themselves from the Ustaša, but were in turn accused of having committed atrocities against Croats in retaliation.

At the end of the war, a large group of anti-communists, Ustashi followers and civilians was on a retreat from the partizan forces, heading west (Italy, Austria). After the British forces on the Austrian-Slovenian border refused to accept passage for them, partizans are said to have executed up to 150,000 people, some of them in a field near the village of Bleiburg near that border, a lot of them on a "death march" back into Yugoslavia.

Second Yugoslavia

Croatia became part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, which was run by Tito's Communist Party. Tito adopted a carefully contrived policy to manage the conflicting national ambitions of the Croats and Serbs. Croats were again in a minority but the constitution of 1963 didn't allow Serbs to have all the political power in the country. They did dominate the secret services and the military, however, as most of the generals in the Yugoslav national army were either Serbian or Montenegrin.

Trends after 1965 led to the Croatian spring of 1970-71, when students in Zagreb organized demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy. The regime stifled the public protest and incarcerated the leaders, but many key Croatian representatives in the Party silently supported this cause, so a new Constitution was ratified in 1974 that gave more rights to the individual republics.

In 1980, after Tito's death, political and economic difficulties started to mount and the federal government began to crumble. The economy was actually in a very good shape until the fall of communism, and Croatia was the second richest of the six republics, surpassed only by Slovenia. However, probably due to the imminent end of the Cold War and all the subtle benefits for Yugoslavia which it entailed, the inflation soared. The last federal prime minister Ante Marković, who was from Croatia, spent two years implementing various economic and political reforms. His government's efforts were superficially successful, but ultimately they failed.

The ethnic tensions were on the increase, and they were to be the real cause of the demise of Yugoslavia. The emergence of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, the nationalist memorandum of Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the growing crisis in Kosovo and everything else that entailed provoked a very negative reaction in Croatia. The fifty year old rift was starting to resurface, and the Croats increasingly began to show their own national feelings and express opposition towards the Belgrade regime.

In 1990, the first free elections were held. A nationalist movement called the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) won, led by Franjo Tuđman and financially supported by the Croat diaspora, in part descendants of the Ustaša from WWII that managed to escape. HDZ's intentions were to secure more independence for Croatia, not excluding the option of secession from Yugoslavia.

Ethnic Serbs which constituted 12% of the population of Croatia rejected the notion of separation from Yugoslavia. Serb politicians feared the loss of influence they previously had through their membership of the League of Communists in Croatia (that the Croats claimed was disproportionate). The memories from WWII were manipulated and abused by the increasingly militant Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milošević.

As Milošević and his clique were riding the wave of Serbian nationalism across Yugoslavia, talking about battles to be fought for Serbdom, Tuđman reciprocated with talking about making Croatia a nation state. The availability of mass media allowed for propaganda to be spread fast and spark jingoism and fear, creating a war climate.

In the summer of 1990, Serbs from the mountainous areas near the Bosnian border (counties of low population density with Serbs a majority) rebelled and formed an Autonomous Region of the Serb Krajina. The Croatian government sent special police forces to intervene, but helicopters carrying them were forced to land by the planes of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). Whatever the role of the JNA was, in the end they only helped widen the rift. Croats believed that the government of Serbia supported the rebels in Croatia with funds and personnel, while Serbs believed that the government of Croatia oppressed the local Serb population. The conflict culminated with the so-called "log revolution", when Krajina Serbs blocked the roads to the tourist destinations in Dalmatia.

Extremists from both sides started an elaborate campaign of harassment and even abductions and murders of people simply because they weren't of the same nationality. Ethnic hatred grew and various incidents fueled the propaganda machines that in turn caused even more hatred. The wider conflict soon escalated into armed incidents in the Krajina areas.

Modern Croatia

The Croatian government declared independence from Yugoslavia on June 25th, 1991, but the European Commission urged them to place a three-month moratorium on the decision. The JNA tried to forcefully maintain the status quo, however, and the new nation started building a real army to counter it. One month after the declaration of independence, Serbian forces held about one third of the country, as they were actually already equipped for war. Given their prevalence in weaponry, their military strategy mostly consisted of extensive bombardment, including civilian targets.

As the war progressed, the cities of Dubrovnik, Šibenik, Zadar, Karlovac, Sisak, Slavonski Brod, Osijek, Vinkovci and Vukovar all came under the attack of the Serbian forces. Croatian Parliament cut all remaining ties with Yugoslavia on October 8, 1991 after a JNA air raid on the government headquarters in Zagreb (October 8 is now Independence day in Croatia). The border city of Vukovar was surrounded by the Serbian troops and almost completely destroyed in the period between August and November 1991. The Croats surrendered Vukovar on November 18th, 1991, allegedly in an attempt to prevent further devastation of Dubrovnik and other cities.

The civilian population massively fled the areas of armed conflict: generally speaking, Croats moved away from the Bosnian and Serbian border, while the Serbs moved towards it. An estimated 220,000 Croats and 300,000 Serbs were internally displaced during the war in Croatia. In many places, masses of civilians were forced out by the military, in what became known as ethnic cleansing.

In December 1991, during the heavy fighting, Germany recognized Croatia's (and Slovenia's) independence, the first EU country to do so. Some, including successive US Secretaries of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Warren Christopher, have strongly criticized this action, which they say escalated the war. Some would say that by doing nothing and imposing an arms embargo on the seceding republics, Western nations silently encouraged the Serbian rampage across Yugoslavia. The EU was persuaded to recognize the independence of the two breakaway republics in January 1992.

January 1992 also brought a UN-sponsored cease-fire, and the warring parties mostly entrenched. The Yugoslav People's Army soon retreated from Croatia into Bosnia and Herzegovina where war was just about to start. During 1992 and 1993, an estimated 225,000 Croats from Bosnia and also from Serbia took refuge in Croatia during this time. A large number of Bosniaks also fled to Croatia.

Croatia became a member of the United Nations on May 22, 1992.

Armed conflict in Croatia remained intermittent and mostly on a small scale until 1995. In early August, Croatia started Operation Storm and quickly took Krajina, except for a small strip near the Serbian border. In just four days, about 140,000 Serbs fled to Bosnia and Serbia. The Croatian army proceeded to fight Serbs in Bosnia alongside the Bosniaks, but further advances were prevented by a US diplomatic intervention. Had the Croat army occupied the second largest Bosnian town of Banja Luka, the refugee crisis would have become unbearable since tens of thousands of people would run further east through the narrow Posavina corridor towards eastern Bosnia and Serbia.

A few months later, the war ended upon the negotiation of the Dayton Agreement (in Dayton, Ohio) which would later be signed in Paris in December 1995.

Croatia became a member of the Council of Europe on November 6, 1996.

The remaining part of Krajina, areas adjacent to Yugoslavia, became a protectorate of the UN Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium. It was formally peacefully re-integrated into Croatia on January 15th, 1998.

Tuđman died in 1999 and the nationalist HDZ government was replaced by a center-left coalition in early 2000. Refugees are returning to their homes, rebuilt by the government; most Croats already returned (except for some in Vukovar), whereas only a third of the Serbs returned, impeded by unfavourable property laws, ethnic problems and economic issues.

Croatia became World Trade Organization (WTO) member on November 30, 2000. The country applied for accession to the European Union in 2003.

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Invasion of the Waikato

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Invasion of the Waikato was an armed conflict during the Maori Wars fought in the North Island of New Zealand from July 1863 to April 1864 between the Colonial Government and a federation of Maori tribes known as the King Movement. The outcome was the retreat of the Kingites into the rugged interior of the Island and the confiscation of about three million acres of Maori land.

It also left a legacy of bitterness which was only partly assuaged when in the 1990s the New Zealand Government paid the Tainui people $NZ 171 000 000 by way of reparation and offered them a full apology for their predecessors' actions. (See Treaty of Waitangi)

The First Taranaki War ended in an uneasy truce when the two sides recognized that they had reached a stalemate. The British Imperial Troops and the Colonial Government had been denied a decisive victory over the Maori. The Taranaki Tribes had not fought alone but had been substantially aided, in both men and materials, from the Waikato region. This was the center for the King Movement, a loose federation of tribes which had been formed mainly to prevent the sale, the loss or the alienation of any more Maori land. The Maori of New Zealand were already outnumbered by the new Pakeha settlers and they were very aware of the threat this represented. The settlers on the other hand were restricted to less than five percent of the land area of the North Island and they weren't happy with this. Furthermore there were two legal systems in operation: British Law prevailed in the settlements and Maori Law and custom everywhere else. The politicians were equally unhappy with this arrangement, and they saw the Maori King Movement as the main obstacle to progress in the colony.

Furthermore the King Country (the Waikato) began immediately to the south of Auckland, the main settlement. Governor Thomas Gore-Browne began making arrangements to invade the Waikato as soon as the First Taranaki War ended. Preparations were suspended for a while when he was replaced by Sir George Grey returning for a second term as governor but were resumed a few months later.

The Invasion of the Waikato differed from the previous Maori Wars in that it was deliberately planned and initiated by the Pakeha. It was estimated that to be successful at least ten thousand troops were needed. Outside of Britain and India the British Imperial Army amounted to only about forty thousand men and by various means Governor Grey persuaded the Colonial Office in London to send a quarter of them to New Zealand. General Sir Duncan Cameron was appointed to lead the invasion. Previously he had fought in the Crimean War which had been a logistical disaster for the British Army, and had developed very strong ideas on what was needed to support an army in the field.

Access to the Waikato region was the first problem. The road south of Auckland extended only about sixty kilometers, well short of the frontier. This had to be extended at least as far as the Waikato River.

Food reserves had to be accumulated. At the time most of the food eaten in Auckland was grown by the Maori who were about to be attacked. Alternative supplies from overseas had to be arranged.

Similarly all the materiel of war had to be accumulated and stockpiled. Both Cameron and Grey were determined not to move until they were ready.

On 9 July 1863 Governor Grey expelled virtually all the Maori living in the territory controlled by the British south of Auckland and three days later the vanguard of the army crossed the frontier into Kingite territory and established a forward camp On 17 July they advanced to the banks of the Waikato River and defeated a small Maori force at Koheroa. They then retreated back to their advanced camp and stayed there until 31 October. Apparently nothing happened for three months.

In fact a great deal was happening. General Cameron was very conscious of the fact that he was operating at the end of a long and vulnerable supply line. The enemy Maori immediately began to demonstrate just how vulnerable it was. Numerous attacks took place at various points along the route; some were successful and some failed. Cameron established a alternative route for supplies using the Lower Waikato River but the Maori closed this down with a daring raid on 7 September.

Meanwhile the army was building a string of redoubts and strong points all along the supply route, at least twenty of them. Manning these mini-fortresses and protecting the supply lines absorbed all but 2000 of Cameron's troops. The other result from this delay was a very serious breakdown in the relationship between the Colonial Government who demanded a quick victory, and the British Imperial Troops fighting on their behalf. Relations between Governor Grey and General Cameron were at a very low ebb. Grey felt that any delay was unnecessary. Cameron resented any political interferednce and also the use of British troops to acquire Maori land for the New Zealand Government to sell. He particularly felt that Grey's expulsion of the friendly Maori from from the occupied territory south of Auckland was both unnecesarily vindictive and had contributed numerous angry recruits to the enemy.

Bypassing the Mere Mere Line

The real invasion of the Waikato Region began on 31 October, by water. Cameron had two armored steamers on the River Waikato which between them could carry six hundred men. The Maori had established a very strong defensive line at Mere Mere which effectively blocked any advance south of the British position. By now the British were learning that frontal attacks on defended Maori positions were very costly and usually ineffective. So they decided to by-pass the Mere Mere Line using their water transport. Two trips were made and 1200 men were successfully landed at Takapau where they could attack from the rear.

The Maori had cannon and they used them to try and stop the steamers but they didn't have cannon balls. Apparently rocks, grocers weights and old iron do not make effective missiles—they hit the steamers as they went past but they couldn't stop them.

Recognizing that they were now in danger of being surrounded the Maori evacuated the Mere Mere line on 1 November and withdrew south.

Rangiri

Work had already begun on another defensive line a short distance further south at Ragiriri. Hurried efforts were made to finish it or at least prepare it for a siege. However the Maori had expended a huge effort on the Mere Mere Line and their resources were stretched, not least because planting season was coming up and many warriors had to return to their home bases at least for a period. They probably mustered about five hundred men against an attacking force of about twelve hundred men.

General Cameron launched his attack on 20 November. His strategy was the same as at Mere Mere—some of his troops were transported by river to the south of the Maori defensive position while the remainder attacked from the north. This time the Maori stood and fought. Parts of the line were quickly overrun but the central redoubt proved to be deceptively strong and easily repelled several desperate attempts to capture it, at the same time inflicting heavy casualties on the attackers. According to James Bellich† the British lost 132 men killed and wounded during the fighting that day.

The British spent an uncomfortable and dangerous night. Then in the morning the Maori hoisted a white flag and shortly afterwards surrendered. The nature of this surrender is open to debate. They were not short of ammunition and they were not surrounded; quite number of them had slipped away during the night. It emerged later that they had not intended to surrender immediately but wished to discover what terms the British might offer them if they did surrender. However when they saw the white flag numerous British soldiers entered the redoubt, shook hands with the Maori and mingled amicably. It was only when Cameron arrived twenty minutes later that he demanded that the Maori yield up their weapons and surrender.

These circumstances, whether it was a misunderstanding or duplicity, did a lot to complicate matters during the subsequent fighting. But it also saved a lot of lives. Few Maori were killed in the fighting, certainly less than the British losses. However 180 were taken prisoner and this made a serious dent in the already stretched Maori forces. Most of them subsequently escaped and returned to the Waikato but by then the war was long over.

The Maori withdrew to the south abandoning their ancestral lands. On 8 December the British forces occupied Ngaruwahia, which had been the main center for the King movement.

The Paterangi Line

The Maori would have accepted peace at this stage but the Colonial Government was still hungry for land and were also still demanding the total extinction of any vestige of Maori authority.

Construction of a new and even more formidable defence line was begun at Paterangi some thirty kilometers south of Ngaruwahia. By the end of January, 1864 it was at least as strong as the Mere Mere line. However Cameron and his army merely bypassed the fortification and advanced on Rangiaowhia, a major Maori population center but, more importantly, the supply center for the Paterangi Line. Cameron was probably hoping that the Maori would commit themselves to the defence of Rangiaowhia thereby giving him the decisive pitched battle he was looking for, one he knew the British would win decisively. It didn't happen although there was some ugly fighting around a building where numerous Maori had taken refuge. They were invited to surrender but refused to do so and all of them died, possibly one of the repercussions of the "White Flag" incident.

The occupation of Rangiaowhia put the British in control of a large area of territory and largely rendered the Paterangi Line redundant. However the British began advancing on the fortifications and once again began evacuating. To delay the British advance the Maori threw up a hurried defence line on the Hairini ridge and defended it against a British attack but only for so long as was needed for the bulk of the Maori forces to escape with their supplies of food and ammunition.

But the British were denied still their decisive battle and a clear victory. They were soon to get it but on terms dictated by the Maori.

The Battle of Orakau (also known as Rewi's Last Stand)

The Waikato Maori did not fight alone. Of the twenty seven North Island Tribes fifteen had sent war parties to assist in the fighting. As they were withdrawing from Paterangi one of the Waikato chiefs, Rewi Maniopoto, encountered a party of Ngati Kahungungu and Tuhoe, about 170 men, who had come a long way to join in the war, all the way from the East Cape and the Urawera. They told Rewi quite forcefully that they had not carried their guns all that distance simply to go home without a fight. After consultation with the other Waikato chiefs Rewi decided that they should have their battle.

Orakau was chosen as the site of the battle, a low hill surrounded by rolling country. It was apparently a very bad choice as it broke at least two of rules the Maori always observed when building a fortification or Pa (see Maori Wars). Firstly it had no internal water supply and secondly it would be relatively easy to surround it completely, leaving the defenders with no means of escape. Why? Maxwell has suggested that Rewi intended to make a sacrificial last stand; he was offering the British their decisive victory. Possibly he was being even more subtle. He was well aware of the serious rift between the Colonial Government and the General Cameron and his officers. Possibly Rewi was hoping that a gallant but forlorn last stand, 300 brave Maori against thousands of British soldiers, would finally sicken them of the war. He even allowed about thirty women and a few children to join their men in the redoubt.

Beginning on 28 March, 1864, two days of hard digging had produced a defensible redoubt. The first British attack came on the morning of 31 March, and was easily repulsed. Then began a three day siege. Numerous assaults were turned back as were sallies by the Maori defenders. The bunkers were deep enough and strong enough to neutralize the artillery.

The Maori ran out of water and were short of ammunition. The British pulled back and invited the Maori to surrender. They refused; they were determined to fight to the last man, woman and child. Then suddenly late in the afternoon of the third day about 250 of the Maori emerged and broke through the cordon of troops surrounding them and escaped into the bush. There was final assault on the Pa and the remaining defenders were massacred, including many of the women.

Some historians, e.g. Bellich, believe that this was due to British incompetence while others such as Maxwell†† suggest that Cameron deliberately weakened the cordon of troops on one side and pulled them back, that he deliberately engineered their escape because he did not wish to be responsible for the apparently inevitable massacre of all the defendants. This seems improbable but we do know from his correspondence that he was sick of fighting. A few months later he resigned his commission, his last orders being that the Imperial troops should take no further aggressive action against the Maori (see Second Taranaki War).

The Maori established yet another defensive line some twenty kilometers south of the furthest British advance and announced that it would be defended vigorously. After some preliminary skirmishing the British decided they had gone far enough. In addition they were suddenly faced with the prospects of serious conflict in other areas of the North Island (see Tauranga Campaign and Second Taranaki War). The War in the Waikato was over by 5 April just as the ramifications of it were spreading to the rest of the Island.

The fourth Waikato defensive line became the new frontier of the King Movement Territory. This area did not become fully integrated with the rest of New Zealand until well into the twentieth century and is still known as the King Country.

Further reading

The New Zealand Wars by James Bellich, Penguin, 1988
History of New Zealand and Its Inhabitants by Dom Felici Vaggioli. 1896, Translated by John Crockett, University of Otago Press, 2000
Te Riri Pakeha by Tony Simpson, Hodder and Stoughton, 1979
Making Peoples by James Bellich, Penguin Press, 1996
The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand edited by Keith Sinclair, second edition, Oxford University Press, 1996
Frontier, the Battle for the North Island of New Zealand by Peter Maxwell, Celebrity Books, 2000.
The New Zealand Wars by James Cowan, P.D. Hasselberg, Government Printer, 1922 and 1983.
The People of Many Peaks, The Maori Biographies from The Dictionary of New Zealand Biographies, Volume 1, 1769-1869, jointly published by Bridget Williams Books and Department of Internal Affairs, New Zealand, 1990
Forest Rangers'' by Richard Stowers, published by Richard Stowers, 1996

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Invasion of the Waikato."

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Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Second Sino-Japanese War was a major invasion of eastern China by Japan preceding and during World War II. It ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. In Chinese, the war is known as the War to Resist the Japanese (抗日戰爭).

Overview

Most historians place the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War on the Battle of Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) on July 7, 1937. However, Chinese historians place the starting point at the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931. Following the Mukden Incident, the Japanese Guandong army occupied Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo (February 1932). Japan pressured China into recognising the independence of Manchukuo. China and Japan did not formally declare war against each other until after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941.

Following the Battle of Lugou Bridge in 1937, the Japanese occupied Shanghai, Nanjing and Northern Shanxi as part of campaigns involving approximately 200,000 Japanese soldiers, and considerably more Chinese soldiers. After the fall of Nanjing, it is estimated that as many as 300,000 people died in the Nanjing Massacre.

While by 1940 Japan held most of the eastern coastal areas of China, guerrilla fighting continued in the conquered areas. The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek struggled on from a provisional capital at Chongqing City; however, realizing that he also faced a threat from communist forces of Mao Zedong, he largely tried to preserve the strength of his army, avoiding heavy battle with the Japanese, in the hopes of defeating the Communists once the Japanese left. Moreover Chiang could not risk an all-out campaign given the well under-trained, equipped, organized Chinese armies and opposition against his leadership within and outside the Kuomintang.

Most military analysts predicted that the Chinese could not keep up the fighting with most of the war factories located in the prosperous areas either under or near Japanese control. Other global powers were reluctant to provide any support unless securing some clandestine purpose because in their opinion the Chinese would eventually lose the war. They expected any support given to China might worsen their own relationship with the Japanese, who taunted the Kuomintang with the prospect of conquest within 3 months.

Germany and the Soviet Union did provide support to the Chinese before the war escalated to the Asian theatre of World War II. The Soviet Union was exploiting the Kuomintang government to hinder the Japanese from invading Siberia, thus saving herself from a two-front war. Furthermore, the Soviets expected any major conflict between the Japanese and the Chinese to hamper any Kuomintang effort to remove the Communist Party of China (CCP) opposition or, in the best scenario, hoped to install a friendly Communist government surreptitiously after the dwindling of Kuomintang authority. Soviet technicians upgraded and handled some of the Chinese war-supply transport. Military supplies and advisors arrived - one Russian named Zhukov witnessed the battle of Tai er zhuang.

Because of Chiang Kai-shek's anti-communist policy and hopes of defeating the CCP, Germany provided the largest proportion of Chinese arms imports. German military advisors modernized and trained the Chinese armies; Chinese officers (including Chiang's second son) were educated in and served in the German army before World War II.

Nevertheless the proposed 30 new divisions equipped with all German arms did not materialize as the Germans sided with the Japanese later in World War II.

Other prominent powerss, including the United States of America, Britain and France, only assisted in war supply contracts up to the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, when major influx of trained military personnels and supplies boosted Chinese chance of keeping up the fighting.

Chiang Kai-shek received some supplies from the United States once the conflict was escalated to the Asian theatre of WWII, and he was appointed Commander-in-chief of the China war zone by the Allies in 1942. Notorious relationship between Colonel Joseph Stilwell and Chiang led to Stilwell's devious criticism and his minimizing of the Chinese contribution in World War II in the American media and to President Franklin Roosevelt. The Allies thus underestimated the Chinese need for supplies and trained personnels. Stilwell also incited power struggles within the Kuomintang which eventually contributed to the rise of the CCP.

Both sides fought to a stalemate after 1941, mainly owing to the dispersion of Japanese forces through vast areas of China - hence Japan could not concentrate its superior armor and firepower. Guerilla activities behind the frontlines also meant constantly deploying stationary Japanese forces in major cities and at road and rail junctions. Control over the countryside and villages gradually swung towards the CCP and Kuomintang.

Japan invaded the Pacific and Southeast Asia (1941) to secure more war supplies (especially the oil resources in Dutch East Indies) but ended up bringing the United States of America into the conflict. As Japanese position in the Pacific was deteriorating fast, a final effort to defeat the Chinese or at least forced any sort of agreements brought the Hubei, Henan, Guangxi provinces under Japanese administration. Nevertheless their prospect of tranferring their troops to fight the Americans was in vain and only committed the Guandong Army from Manchuria in their "Sho plan", which later facilitated the Soviet advancement after the war declaration on August 8 1945.

Japan capitulated to the allies on August 14, 1945. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945 and by the provisions of the Cairo Conference of 1943 the lands of Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands reverted to China. However the Ryukyu islands have never regained their independence.

Casualties Assessment

The conflict lasted for 97 months and 3 days (measured from 1937 to 1945). The Kuomintang fought in 22 major engagements, each of which involved at least one hundred thousand troops from both sides, and in just over 40,000 skirmishes. The CCP fought in 111,500 engagements of various sizes. The Japanese recorded around 1.1 million military casualties, wounded and missing. The Chinese suffered much worse, losing approximately 3.22 million soldiers. 9.13 million civilians died in crossfire, and another 8.4 million as non-military casualties. Property loss of the Chinese worthed up to 383,301.3 million US dollars according to the currency exchange rate in July 1937, roughly 50 times of the GDP of Japan (770 million US dollars).

Major figures

China: Nationalist

China: Communist Japan Others

Military engagements

Battles

Attacks on civilians

See also

zh-cn:抗日战争

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)."

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Spanish-American War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. See talk page for more info.

History -- Military history -- War

The Spanish-American War took place in 1898, and resulted in the United States of America gaining control over the former colonies of Spain in the Caribbean and Pacific.

Background

For many centuries Spain's position as a world power had been slipping away. By the late nineteenth century the nation was left only a few scattered possessions in the Pacific, Africa, and the West Indies. Much of the empire had gained its independence and a number of the areas still under Spanish control were clamoring to do so. Guerrilla forces were operating in the Philippines, and had, for decades, been present in Cuba. The Spanish government did not have the financial or the manpower resources to deal with these revolts and thus turned to expedients of building camps to separate the rebels from their rural base of support. The Spaniards also carried out many executions of suspected rebels and harshly treated villages and individuals thought to be supporting them. By the end of the 1890s the rebels had mostly been defeated and Cuba was returning to a relative peace. In the long run, however, Spain's position was completely untenable.

These events in Cuba coincided in the 1890s with a struggle for readership between the American newspaper chains of Hearst and Pulitzer. One of the most popular features were tales of great atrocities (some based on fact, some not) which the 'cruel Spanish masters' were inflicting on the 'hapless native Cubans' (see: Black Legend). Cuban. Sections of the American people began pushing for intervention.

There were other pressures pushing towards war. The US navy had recently grown considerably, but it was still untested. The Navy had drawn up plans for attacking the Spanish in the Philippines over a year before hostilities broke out. The end of western expansion and of large-scale conflict with the First Nations also left the army with little to do, and army leadership hoped that some new task would come. From an early date many in the US had felt that Cuba was rightly theirs. The theory of manifest destiny made the island just off the coast of Florida seem very attractive. Much of the island's economy was already in American hands, and most of its trade, much of which was black market, was with the US. Some business leaders pushed for conflict as well. In the words of Senator Thurston of Nebraska: "War with Spain would increase the business and earnings of every American railroad, it would increase the output of every American factory, it would stimulate every branch of industry and domestic commerce."

In Spain the government was not entirely averse to war. The US was an unproven power. The Spanish navy, however decrepit, had a glorious history and it was thought it could be a match for the US. There was also a widely held notion among Spain's aristocratic leaders that the United States' ethnically mixed army and navy could never survive under severe pressure.


US "1st Kentucky Volunteers" in "Porto Rico", 1898

The Start of the War

On February 15, 1898 the American battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor suffered an explosion and quickly sunk with a loss of 260 men. Evidence as to the cause of the explosion was inconclusive and contradictory, but the American press, led by the two New York papers, proclaimed that this was certainly a despicable act of sabotage by the Spaniards. The press aroused the public to demand war, with the slogan "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!".

(Expert opinion is still divided; most now consider an accidental explosion of coal fuel to be as likely a reason as any for the ship's fate. Modern anylitical tools, especially computer simulations, have all but confirmed this. Few still think a mine could have been the cause. Some believe it could well have been sabotage, but by Cuban revolutionaries who hoped to draw the US into the war. Almost all agree the Spaniards would have no interest in provoking a war.)

US President William McKinley was not inclined towards war, and had long held out against intervention, but the Maine explosion so forcefully shaped public opinion that he had to agree. Spanish minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta did much to try to prevent this, including withdrawing the officials in Cuba against whom complaints had been made, and offering the Cubans autonomy. This was well short of full independence for Cuba, however and would do little to change the status quo.

Thus On April 11 McKinley went before Congress to ask for authority to send American troops to Cuba for the purpose of ending the civil war there. On April 19 Congress passed joint resolutions proclaiming Cuba "free and independent", demanded Spanish withdrawal, and authorized the President to use such military force as he thought necessary. In response Spain broke off diplomatic relations with the United States. On April 25 US Congress declared that a state of war between the United States and Spain had existed since April 21st (Congress later passed a resolution backdating the declaration of war to April 20th).

The Philippines

The first battle was in the Philippines where on May 1, Commodore George Dewey commanding the United States Pacific fleet, in six hours defeated the Spanish squadron, under Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón, at the Battle of Manila Bay. Meanwhile Philippine nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo attacked the Spanish on land, and many of the Spanish troops surrendered.

Cuba

In Cuba the American navy met the Spanish Atlantic fleet in Santiago Bay on July 3. The Americans defeated the Spanish and gained control of the waterways around Cuba. This prevented re-supply of the Spanish forces and also allowed the US to land its considerable forces safely on the island.

In Cuba Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt became a war hero when he led a charge at the battle of San Juan Hill outside of Santiago as lieutenant colonel of the Rough Riders Regiment on July 1. The Americans were aided in Cuba by the pro-independence rebels lead by General Calixto García.

The ground war had far more problems dealing with heat and disease than the Spanish forces, and within a month the island was in US hands.

On 25 July US troops landed in Puerto Rico.

End of the War

With both fleets incapacitated, Spain realized her forces in the Pacific and Caribbean could not be supplied or reinforced, so Spain sued for peace.

Hostilities were halted on August 12. The formal Peace Treaty was signed in Paris on December 10, 1898 and was ratified by the United States Senate on February 6, 1899.

The United States gained almost all of Spain's colonies including Cuba, The Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.

Aftermath

On August 14, 1898, 11,000 ground troops were sent to occupy the Philippines. When US troops began to take the place of the Spanish in control of the country, warfare broke out between US forces and the Filipinos. A long and bloody war was fought (unsuccessfully) to quash the Filipino nationalits' desire for independence, with thousands of military and civilian casualties. (See: Philippine-American War)

The Spanish-American War is significant as it saw the US emerge as the equal of any European power. It was also the start of the American Empire in which America would be forced to manage the affairs of several small colonies, much like the Empires of Europe.

Congress had passed a resolution in favor of Cuban independence before the war started, and after debate the USA decided to allow this, although American forces occupied Cuba until January 28, 1909. The USA annexed the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, The Philippines, and Guam. The idea of the United States as an imperial power with foreign colonies was hotly debated domestically, with President McKinley and the Pro-Imperialists winning their way over vocal opposition. The American public largely supported the possession of colonies, but there were many outspoken critics such as Mark Twain.

The Spanish-American War is also famous for its "yellow journalism." Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst is reported to have responded to a request by illustrator Frederick Remington's to return from a Havana that was quiet, by saying, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." (Orson Welles deliberately mocked this particular quote in the movie Citizen Kane.) The Hearst papers did much to agitate public sentiment in favor of war before it started.

Another interesting but little-noted effect of this short war was that it served to further cement relations between the American North and South. The war gave both sides a common enemy for the first time since the end of the Civil War in 1865. The 1890's were a period of reconciliation between the former Yankees and Confederates, marked by "Blue-Gray" Reunions and increased political harmony between Northern and Southern politicians. The "Lost Cause" myth took hold in the popular imagination and many former Confederate leaders were held in general high esteem nationally, especially Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The 1890's also saw resurgent racism in the North and the passage of Jim Crow laws that increased segregation of blacks from whites, culminating in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the Supreme Court in 1896 that codified the "separate but equal" doctrine into law. The Spanish-American War provoked widespread feelings of jingoistic American nationalism that fused often-divergent Northern and Southern public opinion into a single stream in a manner unseen since the Mexican-American War of the mid-1840's.

According to data from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the last surviving U.S. veteran of the conflict, Nathan E. Cook, died on September 10, 1992 at the age of 106.


William Glackens: A Street scene at Tampa City
()

SEE ALSO: Battles of the Spanish-American War

Links

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Thirteen Years' War

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

History -- Military history -- War -- History of Poland

The Thirteen Years' War (also called the War of the Cities) started out as an uprising by Prussian cities and the local nobility with the goal of gaining independence from the Teutonic Knights. The Prussian Confederation asked the Polish king for help and offered to incorporate Prussia into Poland. When the king agreed, war between Poland and the Teutonic Knights broke out. It ended with the Second Treaty of Thorn in 1466 (also known as the Peace of Torun), an agreement between the Teutonic Knights and Poland, which, although negotiated with help from the Papal legate, was not confirmed by the Pope.

Preliminaries

Reasons behind the war

In the 15th century, the states of Prussia saw the rapid economic development of their cities. However this was not followed by an increase in their political influence. The rule of the Teutonic Knights was seen as more and more anachronistic -- taxes (funt customs) and the system of grain licences (every trader had to pay large fees for the privilege of trading grain) were hindering economic development in the province. At the same time the gentry wanted a bigger say in the running of the country, and were looking enviously at neighbouring Poland, where nobles enjoyed wider privileges. The Teutons were also accused of violating the few existing privileges of the gentry and the cities. Craftsmen were discontented because of competition from so-called partacze, that is artisans settled by the Teutons near their castles. Kashubians, Poles, Germans and Prussians were slowly melting into one nation, and as national differences disappeared, the common goals of all the ethnic and social groups of Prussia became more prominent.

The western part of Prussia, called Pomerania, where the main city of Danzig was situated, was originally captured by Duke Boleslaus I of Poland, and until conquest by Teutons was part of Polish kingdom, and some links to Poland were still present and actually increasing with strong cultural and trading contacts, and marriages between the elite families of Krakow, Danzig and Thorn. Krakow was a Hanseatic League city as well and had many German craftmen and inhabitants at that time. Many Prussians - both Poles and Germans - taught and studied at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow.

Note: The following is from a book by Marian Biskup, "Wojna trzynastoletnia" (The Thirteen Years War), plus some other information. The memory of the Polish roots of Pomerania by later developing Polish nationals wasn't an important reason for starting the uprising, but it became more important later.

There was a long tradition of resistance against the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. In 1397 Prussian knights had founded a secret organisation called Eidechsenbund (The Band of Lizards), with more or less anti-Teutonic goals, but since that organisation had not included the urban population, it failed. After victory by the Lithuanian and Polish forces at the Battle of Grunwald during the Great War 1409-1411, the Prussian states eagerly pledged allegiance to King Ladislaus Jagiello, but they quickly returned to Teutonic rule after the Poles were unable to conquer Marienburg (Malbork). A clause in the peace treaty stated that it was guaranteed by the Prussian states, which would gain the right to defy the Teutonic Order if it broke the treaty. In the succeeding wars the Prussian states opposed any conflict, and pushed the Grand Masters of the Order to make peace.

On February 21 1440 a group made up of individuals from the Prussian cities, gentry and clergy, formed the Prussian Confederation. The main contributors were from the gentry of Culmer Land, from Thorn, Culm and from the Hanseatic cities of Elbing and Danzig. Grand Master Paul Russdorf was seen to approve the existence of the Confederacy, but his successor, Conrad von Erlichhausen tried to destroy it. His policy was followed by Ludvig von Erlichhausen.

In 1452 the Prussian Confederation asked Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, for mediation in their conflict with the Teutonic Order. On December 5 1453, the Emperor, apparently not caring to listen to all the arguments of the Confederacy, banned it and ordered it to obey the Teutonic Order. Faced with that situation the Prussians sent envoys to Poland -- although the Prussian confederacy, under the influence of Thorn and the Pomeranian and Culmer Land gentry had already sought contact with Poles. They receive support, especially from Greater Poland and from the party of Queen Sophia Holszanska (mother of the King of Poland, Casimir IV). The Cardinal Bishop of Kracow, Zbigniew Olesnicki, opposed this support and tried to prevent war. In January 1454 the Prussians asked the Polish King to incorporate Prussia into Poland. The King asked the Prussian Confederacy for a more formal petition.

On February 4 1454, the Secret Council of the Prussian Confederacy sent a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master. Two days later the Confederacy started its rebellion and soon almost all Prussia, except for Marienburg, Stuhm and Konitz (Conitz) or Chojnice, were free from Teutonic rule. Most of the captured castles were immediately destroyed. On February 10 1454, the Confederacy sent an official delegation to Poland, headed by Johannes von Baysen, called Jan Bazynski by the Poles. By February 20 the delegates were in Kracow and asked Casimir IV, to bring Prussia into the Polish kingdom. After negotiating the exact conditions of incorporation, the King agreed and on March 6 1454 delegates of Prussian Confederation stated that whole of Prussia pledged allegiance to the Polish King. On the same day, the King agreed to all the conditions of the Prussian delegates -- for instance Thorn demanded the destruction of the Polish city of Nieszawa -- giving wide privileges to the Prussian cities and gentry. Three days later, Johannes von Baysen (Jan Ba¿yñski) became the first Polish governor of Prussia. After April 15 most of the Prussian states, with the exception of the Bishopric of Ermeland, pledged allegiance to their new ruler. Poland sent the Grand Master a declaration of war, predated to February 22. When the war started everybody expected it to be over quickly, on both sides.

International situation

In 1454 Poland was in conflict with Lithuania, which meant that although Casimir IV was Grand Duke of Lithuania as well as King of Poland, Lithuania sent no aid during the whole war to Poland, and didn't participate in it, except for a few raids without any impact on the result of the war. There was also the threat of attack by Russia and by the Ottoman Turks who in 1453 sacked Constantinople.

Elsewhere, the international situation was quite good for Poland -- no-one apart from the main combatants was likely to intervene. The southern border of Poland was more or less secure because of the weakness of the Czech kingdom, which resulted from the Hussite Wars. The Holy Roman Empire because of its internal problems wasn't able to directly intervene in the conflict. The Hanseatic League, on the one hand, backed the Teutonic Knights (because they supported differential economical Hansa privileges), but on the other, they felt sympathy for the plight of the Prussian cities. The Order in Inflanty had problems with Denmark and was unable to help the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. Because of conflict between Sweden and Denmark both sides stayed more or less neutral in the upcoming conflict.

France and England were too weakened after the Hundred Years' War. The King of Burgundy, Flanders and the Netherlands, Philip the Good, was interested more in creating the independent kingdom of Burgundy. The Pope's primary concern was the Turkish menace.

The Forces of the Belligerents

The main part of the Polish army of that period was conscripted. All noblemen from the class known as the Szlachta, when called by the king, had to appear with their village-mayors and village-administrators. Cities gave wagons with horses, food, and service to them (including escorts). Units were divided into choragwie (standards) of two kinds: family, which were made by very large clans, and land which were from nobles from particular territory. Peasants also participated as infantrymen. The highest command belonged to the king. The total army could amount to 30,000 cavalry.

From the beginning of 15th century the Polish Crown started to hire mercenaries in addition, which usually fought under the flag of St. George (especially Czech mercenaries). That is under either a red cross on white, or a white cross on red (the latter was used only when two Czech units met on opposite sides of a battlefield and had to be differentiated).

An important part of the tactics was, the concept of tabor, learned from the Czechs.

The Poles had artillery (at first primitive cannons: bombards and suchlike). Hand arms appeared, but they weren't very effective: the so-called pistols. Much more important were crossbows, which, properly used, could cause large losses.

The army of the Prussian states consisted of conscripts and small units provided by cities (around 750 people each unit). In total they could provide about 16,000 soldiers plus a few thousand armed peasant infantry. They also had more artillery than the Polish army.

The Prussian cities were also able to raise a small navy, partially from armed trade ships, partially from hired privateers from other cities.

The Teutonic Order in 1454 lost most of its arsenals, but later it was able to raise armies from loyal knights (free Prussians) and peasants. However most of its forces were hired mercenaries, mainly from Germany and the Czech lands.

Overview

First phase

The first land operations (February - August 1454) were carried out by Prussian state conscripts, supported by Czech mercenaries from Moravia, Lesser Poland, etc. This force, commanded by Scibor Bazynski (Scibor von Baysen, brother of Johannes von Baysen), tried to besiege the Grand Master Ludvik von Erlichhausen in the city and castle of Malbork, but without much success, due to the professional command of Heinrich Reuss von Plauen the Elder, Count of Elbling.

In the meantime there was some organised support for the Teutonic Order from the German Duchies, mainly in Saxony. That support entered Prussia in the second half of March 1454, from the direction of New March (Neumark). It was able to take the highly important strategic city of Chojnice, which was situated on the important route from Poland to the mouth of the Vistula. Johannes von Baysen moved conscript and mercenary forces there, and they were soon followed by Mikolaj Szarlejski, who was the representative of the Polish kingdom and received the title of Supreme Commander of Forces in Prussia.

On April 7 1454, the Teutons gave Neumark to Brandenburg "to assure itself better relations and connection with Germany".

At the end of April 1454, the Prussian army started the siege of Chojnice -- the defence of the city was commanded by Heinrich Reuss von Plauen the Younger from Greitz. However, the Polish commander Mikolaj Szarlejski lacked any significant commanding skill, his army hadn't enough artillery, and the Prussian states weren't able to pay their mercenaries, so Chojnice was not seriously endangered.

After the arrival of Casimir IV, when he received the official oath of allegiance from his new subjects in Elbing and Thorn, he directed to Chojnice a levee en masse of Polish nobles from Cujavia which replaced unpaid mercenaries. Cavalry forces such as the nobles, however, were ill-suited to the taking of castles, so the situation of Chojnice did not change. The king also sent his own units and a levee en masse to lay siege to Malbork, but Polish forces were unable to take the castle even with Prussian reinforcements, which were relocated to Malbork after taking Sztum (August 8 1454). The Teutons defended themselves skilfully and were even able to defeat forces from Danzig in a sudden attack on September 13.

The situation of the Polish crown was getting very bad, and it worsened when in September 1454 a large army of mercenaries under the command of Rudolf, prince of Zagan, and a Moravian nobleman, the very talented soldier Bernard Szumborski arrived in Prussia from the German Reich. The army had 9000 cavalry and 6000 infantry, plus artillery and many wagons in tabor. That army was slowly moving to Chojnice, apparently to release it from siege. It forced King Casimir to call a levee en masse of Greater Poland, without the traditional approval of the provincial sejmik. Noblemen, angered by the disruption of the harvest and the unconventional form of the call, massed near the village of Cerekwica and demanded from the king several privileges, which were granted in the privilege of Cerekwica September 14 1454. After that the king divided his forces into seven large units and the army marched to Chojnice, where it was joined by Prussians. At Chojnice the army met the Teutonic knights and on September 18 1454 was defeated in the major battle of Chojnice. The defeat was a near disaster: the Polish army quickly withdrew from Malbork, and Sztum was again captured by Teutons. They were also able to take other big cities, like Gniew and Tczew (Dirsaw). Impressed by the Teutons' victory, some Prussian lands also capitulated. This was a great victory for the Teutons, and they had now only one minor problem: they hadn't enough money to pay the victorious mercenaries. The Grand Master promised them on October 9 that if he could not pay them by February 19 1455, they would receive all cities, castles and lands of Prussia, with the rights to sell them.

Mercenaries later captured two other cities, Kwidzyn and Lasin. But none of the largest and most important cities of Prussia, not even Königsberg, surrendered, and they were all determined to continue the war. As a result, the Teuton Order was totally dependent on help from the German Reich.

To save the situation, King Casimir started hiring more Czech and Silesian soldiers and sending them to the cities of Pomerania, Pomesania and Culmer land. He also decided to call for another levee en masse from the whole Polish kingdom. The levee en masse in Opoka, this time dominated by gentry from Lesser Poland, demanded privileges similar to those given in Cerekwica. The King quickly approved them, but under the influence of the aristocracy from Lesser Poland later, in privileges for the whole country given November 11 - November 16 1454 in Nieszawa (Famous privilege of Nieszawa) he changed some of his promises given earlier both in Opoka and Cerekwica.

This time the Polish army counted almost 30000 cavalry plus 3000 mercenaries. The mercenaries had a few good commanders: Jan Kolda from Zampach and Jan Skalski from the northern Czech city of Mala Skala (literally, "little rock") and a member of Czech family of Valdsztejn, better known under their German name, Waldstein or Wallenstein. This time the Grand Master avoided battle as too risky. The army started the siege of Lasin, whose defense was commanded by Austrian mercenary Fryc Raveneck. However, the army was totally unprepared for taking castles. Large preparations ended with another fiasco. Also, the first negotiations with Teutons (January 9 -January 10 1455) failed.

The situation of King Casimir became difficult. To pay his mercenaries he had to borrow from the clergy. He decided to give two cities as a fief to Eric II of Pomerania from Slupsk, hoping that that would secure northern Pomerania. Later Casimir had to go to Lithuania to calm down opposition and he was forced to stay there until the summer of 1455.

In that situation the Teutons were able to conquer the eastern part of Prussia - helped by rebellions in a few cities, which were caused by huge new war taxes (Königsberg, Lipnik (April 17 1455). The last East Prussian city loyal to the Polish king, Knipawa, was taken after a long siege by Teutons commanded by Heinrich Reuss von Plauen (older) on June 14 1455. The Poles were suffering defeat after defeat, and they later also lost Ermeland. However, the Grand Master was unable to pay his mercenaries and they took Malbork, Tczew and Ilawa (Eylau) in May 1455. Mercenaries under Czech Ulrich von Czirvonka (Oldrzych Czerwonka) immediately started negotiations with Poland on selling these castles.

The international situation also became significantly worse. The Holy Roman Emperor Frideric III March 24 1455 banned the Prussian Confederation, which caused that everybody could claim its property and forbade any trade with its members. After the death of Pope Nicolaus V, the new Pope Kalikst III on September 24 1455 warned that he would excommunicate the Prussian Confederacy and all its allies (which could mean King Casimir) if it would not settle peace with the Teuton Order. In June 1455 Teuton Order gained a new ally, the king of Denmark, Christian I, who declared war against Poland and the Prussian Confederacy. This however meant nothing more than a disturbance in trade, since Denmark was still busy fighting with Sweden.

Shocked by the loss of Knipawa, King Casimir, in debt and unable to hire new mercenaries, called another levee en masse. The Polish army moved slowly to Thorn, but military actions were halted briefly, when the king finally agreed to mediation by the elector of Brandenburgia, Frideric II (all earlier propositions of mediation from different sides had been rejected). The elector however failed to negotiate a peace, because the Teutons, after recent successes, were unwilling to compromise. The Poles suggested from their side that the Teuton Order should leave Prussia and go elsewhere to fight with pagans (a location suggested ealier by Polish envoys to the Holy Roman Empire was Podole, near the Tatars). In that situation negotiations September 26 ended with no gains, and the war continued.

The new Polish army was even bigger than before, because this time it included soldiers from Red Rus, small auxiliary forces of Tatars and a few mercenaries from Silesia. It laid siege to Lasin, but Raveneck was able to defend the city. Additionally, when Casimir IV ordered a further march to Grudziadz, Szlachta refused and instead decided to pay a new tax, which would allow the king to hire more mercenaries.

After that, the situation did not change much. The Teutons were able to capture another city, Klajpeda, but their offensive in other directions was stopped by the burghers of Thorn and of Culmer Land, Andrzej Teczynski. In autumn 1455 the peasants of eastern Masuria, tired of the burdens of war, revolted against the Teutons. The Teutons defeated the rebels at Ryn on January 1 1456. Land-based military actions were limited to raids and local skirmishes.

In the maritime arena, King Casimir ordered Danzig to build a fleet which would be able to break sea connections between the Teuton Order and its allies. In May 1456 privateers hired by Danzig captured Dutch ships, which caused conflict with Amsterdam and the Prince of Burgundy, Philip the Good. In two weeks in August 1457 three ships from Danzig, near Bornholm, defeated 16 Danish and Inflant (?) ships.

After long negotiations Teuton mercenaries agreed to sell Poland three castles in Prussia, including Malbork. Heavy new taxes caused rebellions in Danzig and Thorn which were bloodily suppressed by the cities with help from the king's army. Finally the Polish and Prussian states were able to gather 190,000 Hungarian gold pieces (Zlotych wegierskich?), most of which had been borrowed from Danzig. On June 6 1457 Malbork, Tczew and Ilawa (Eylau) were transferred to the Polish army. Two days later King Casimir entered the castle of Malbork, and its burghers paid homage to him. Ulrich von Czerwonka became the first Polish sheriff of the castle, and also received three other counties. The king again granted broad privileges to the Prussian cities. It was generally expected that now, with the fall of the Teutonic capital, war would end quickly. Optimism faded, however, when the Polish army commanded by Prandota Lubieszowski was unable to take Gniew, which was again defended by Raveneck. Casimir had to return to Poland to seek money to pay his debts and mercenaries. The mood worsened when the Grand Master organised a new offensive. The Teutons received significant aid from the burghers of Königsberg, free Prussian knights and others. Although they were unable to take Welawa and Sepopol, the two Polish castles which were the initial target of the offensive, they again defeated the Polish army in September 1457. 

On September 28, 1457, Teutonic Order forces under the command of Szumborski (who had been released by the Poles), with help from the burghers, took Malbork by surprise -- only the castle commanded by Czerwonka was saved. Prandota Lubieszowski was able to stop further advances of the Teutonic army, but this was not the last of the Teuton successes. They captured Ilawa (which again pledged allegiance to the Teutons), Culm (Kulm, Chelmno) and Starogard Gdanski. The situation was saved by a new Polish army sent from Greater Poland. 

The international situation became increasingly complicated. The new bishop of Ermeland was Cardinal Eneas Silvio Piccolomini, known for his pro-Teuton sympathies. Soon after that, in 1458, Piccolomini was elected pope and took the name of Pius II. Another complication was the death of Wladislav Habsburg and the election of George Podiebrad as new (Hussite) king of the Czechs, and Matthias Corvinus as king of Hungary. 

In Spring 1458 Casimir IV again called for a levee en masse, this time calling even the Masovians. Ignoring the mediation of John Giskra (Jan Jiskra), a Czech mercenary who hoped for an end to war with Prussia and the start of a new conflict with Hungary, the Polish army slowly marched into Prussia, during June crossing the Vistula via ponton bridge near Thorn. Again the army was supported by Tatar auxiliary forces from Crimea and by the king's own army. The army was commanded by Piotr of Szamotuly, the castellan of Posen. The Polish army marched directly to Malbork, reaching the city on August 10. This time it was quite well equipped with artillery sent by Danzig and Elbing. The siege, however, was another fiasco, due partly to  lengthy negotiations, and partly to Piotr's lack of aggression on the battlefield. He was such an inept commander that Fryc Raveneck was able to take yet another castle. The nobles demanded the storming of the castle, and when this did not happen, they started deserting and returning to Poland.

In Low Prussia there was a peasant rebellion against Polish rule. The peasants captured a few castles and gave them to the Teutons, declaring that they were ready to fight on the Teuton Order's side against Poland. 

In the meantime the king, using John Giskra as mediator, negotiated with the Teutons. The Poles again proposed that the Teuton Order should leave Prussia for Podole. The Teutons agreed on Podole, but refused to leave Prussia. Danzigers proposed a compromise which would leave part of Prussia for the Teuton Order. At one point there was a signed cease fire lasting 9 months (there was even a signed treaty, and John Giskra as mediator kept Malbork), and peace appeared certain, but the Prussian states decided to persuade the king to break off negotiations.

One positive sign was peace with Denmark. The Danish king finally conquered Sweden, but the Swedish king, Karol Knutson, escaped to Poland and started supporting the Polish cause financially. Danzig and Knutson were hiring more and more privateers, which seriously damaged Baltic trade, and finally Christian I, king of Denmark, decided in July 1458 to sign a cease fire, which was in May 1459 extended to four years, and then to 20 years.

In 1459 Jan Bazynski died, and his brother, Scibor Bazynski, became the new governor of Prussia. Teutons were raiding the Polish lands and enjoying quite a few successes (for example Kaspar Nostyc, komtur of Chojnice, captured for a few months one of the Polish cities in northern Greater Poland). There were other attempts at mediation (by the Bavarian prince, the Austrian prince, and even by bishops from Inflanty) but they were all refused by Poland. More serious mediation was undertaken by pope Pius II, who was trying to mount a coalition against the Turks. He suspended the curse over Prussian states and he explicitly stated that the forementioned curse was also against Poland. That statement outraged king Casimir, who rejected the arrival of the Pope's legate (Hieronymus Lando). In 1460, on June 3, the Pope reactivated the curse against Prussia, Poland and the Polish king. At the same time the Czech king George Podiebrad banned and jailed Ulrich von Czirvonka and his comrades, and agreed to hire Teuton soldiers in the territory of his kingdom. 

1460 March 21 Polish army, this time regular, supported by Danzigers and peasants, started again siege of city of Malbork (castle of Malbork was still in Polish hands). This time army had a little better and more energic commander, Prandota Lubieszowski, and enough artillery. Prandota died and was replaced by Jan Koscielecki with Danziger Jan Meydeburg as advisor. This regular siege finally cause capitulation of city  of Malbork in 1460, July 5. Blume, burgmeister was hanged as traitor (since he pledged allegiance to Polish king and later opened gates of city to Teutons). 

This Polish success was quickly countered by the Teutons, who conquered other cities in western Prussia, and, what's more, defeated the army of Danzig near Pruszcz Gdanski in July 1460, even burning the suburbs of Danzig. Danzig asked the king for help. The Teutons also conquered Lebork and Bytow (which, as we remember, were in the possession of Eric II of Pomerania), Leba and Puck (Puck was garrisonned by mercenaries hired by the former Swedish king Karol Knutson). Szumborski also captured the castle of Swiecie (Swiecin or Schwetz). Thorn immediately sent soldiers there, who, helped by the King's army, started a siege. In Ermeland the administration Paul Legendorf commenced.  He was appointed by the Pope, and promised neutrality between the Teutons and Polish king. The neutrality of Legendorf made him very popular amongst the burghers and peasants, who were simply tired of war. 

Situation of Poland became desperate. One by one, castles and cities were captured by the Teutonic army. Internal situation was also not very bright, because of the conflict between the pope and the king over nominating the new bishop of Cracow (since both king and pope were convinced that the other had no right to choose the new bishop). 

The Polish king again called for levee en masse, but most of the gentry refused participation after Andrzej Teczynski was killed in Cracow by burghers (in a dispute over payment for his armour). Again, this was a total fiasco.  Commanders (amongst them Piotr from Szamotuly) seemed even as if they didn't know where they should go, and after a few weeks (and raids to duchy of Eric II of Pomerania) army returned home. 

This, and another success of the Teutons, which took almost all castles and towns of Ermeland, capturing the last Polish points of resistance, convinced the king finally that war should be left to professionals. The gentry agreed to pay new taxes for hiring and maintaining a more regular army. Her new commander was Piotr Dunin. 

In 1461 Poland had only one success - capturing the castle of Swiecie. On the sea privateers hired by Danzig were far more successful, although they had to fight not only with Teutonic ships and privateers hired by the Teutons, but also with ships from Lübeck.


Second phase

First group - initially around 2000 soldiers - of regular army came to Prussia around October 1461, under Piotr Dunin from Prawkowice. Piotr Dunin was soldier to the bones, knowing newest methods of military tactics. Almost immedietely he achieved two successes, capturing castles of Lasin and Sztum. Teutons in the same time captured few cities and castles, for example city of Brodnice (castle stayed in Polish hands) and Starogard. Sejm in New City of Korczyn in Lesser Poland decided to raise new taxes for increasing Polish regular army. It was only summer 1462 when Dunin finally after losing castle of Brodnica, could start any more serious action. His first success was rescuing castle of Frombork. But what changed the course of the war was battle of Swiecin, where died excellent Teuton commander Fryc Raveneck. After that battle Poles, supported by (released from Czech jail) Ulrich von Czirwonka were able to start offensive. In July 27 1463 Dunin started siege of Gniew. Because of great strategic importance of the city and castle, grand master of Teuton Order decided to send it rescue. Army of Teutons, under commanders Plauen, Szumborski and Grand Master gathered in Stargard. In September 15 1463 army of Teutons, on 44 ships, was destroyed in battle of Zatoka Swieza by 30 ships from Danzig and Elbing. Soon after the battle Szumborski, with approval of Teuton Order, made a treaty with Poland, withdrawing from war (but still having in his possession few castles in Culmer Land). Gniew capitulated soon in January 1 1464. 

The Teutons started to have serious financial problems. Every year they received less money from the German Reich.  Their mercenaries, the core of the Teutonic army, were not paid and refused to make any serious offensives. At the same time the armies of Poland and the Prussian Confederation (mainly Danzig) were continuing their offensive. 

However, King Casimir was unable to get all the fruits of these successes, because of troubles in Lithuania.  The Lithuanians suddenly rejected the idea of moving the Teutonic Order to Podole, even if Lithuania would get some territories in Prussia. This forced the king to open new negotiations with the Teutonic Order, with the Hanseatic League as mediators. On July 3 1462 negotiations started in Thorn. The Polish negotiators (Johannes Longinus aka Jan Dlugosz, famous historian, and rector of University of Cracow Jan from Dabrowka) with the Prussian representatives (Gabriel and Scibor Bazynski with envoys from big cities) argued that Pomerania from time immemorial belonged to Poland, pointing out Slavic names in Pomerania, the Slavic language of inhabitants, the tax of St. Peter paid by Pomerania, and that Pomerania belonged to the Polish Church diocese of Wloclawek. They also strongly emphasized that Prussians of their own will asked for the incorporation of Prussia into Poland. They also tried to prove that even eastern Prussia was, in time past, tied in some way to Poland. The Teutons questioned all their arguments and past Papal judgments.  Instead they strongly underlined that Poland once officially resigned all claims to Pomerania and Culmer land, and also pointed to the Emperor's statement of 1453 when he forbade all opposition in Prussia. Hanseatic mediators proposed a cease fire for 20 years; this was refused. The Poles proposed again moving the Teutons to Podole; this was refused too. Unofficially the Poles proposed leaving the Teutonic Order in Sambia as Polish vassals. This idea was rejected too. Finally the Poles demanded at least Pomerania, Culmer Land, Malbork and Elbing, and when this was rejected too, negotiations broke down. 

Dunin continued on the offensive, capturing more and more castles.  Masovians, enraged by Teutonic raids, organised a levee en masse and captured the castle of Dzialdowo. But again the king had to leave Poland for Lithuania, and financial problems stopped further advances. This caused another round of negotiations in 1465, which were again unsuccessful. 

In 1466 Bishop Legendorf of Ermeland decided to join the Polish forces and declare war on the Teutons.  Polish forces under Piotr Dunin were finally also able to captured Chojnice (September 28 1466). 

All of these successes caused the Teutonic Order to seek new negotiations (which are well documented because one of the Polish negotiators was again historian Johannes Longinus - Jan Dlugosz ). The new mediator was Pope Paul II. With a lot of help from the Pope's legate Rudolf from Rudesheim, in October 10 1466, a peace treaty (known as the peace of Thorn) was finally signed.  Prussia as a whole was incorporated into the Polish kingdom; the Teutons were allowed to rule its eastern part as Polish vassals. The Grand Master received the title of Senator of the Polish kingdom. The treaty was signed by the Pope's legate. Both sides agreed, that although the Pope's approval wasn't necessary, they would ask him to confirm the treaty so as to ensure it. Later however, the Pope refused to do that. The treaty was also disputed by Emperor (?).


Aftermath

Peace of Thorn, changes to Polish legal system (Privilege in Nieszawa etc...)


Main Battles


Important persons


External links

This is a summary of the book by Marian Biskup, "Wojna trzynastoletnia", plus some other information
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Thirteen Years' War."
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United States Department of War
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The United States Department of War was the military department of the United States government's executive branch  from 1789 until 1949, when it was succeeded by the United States Department of Defense.

 

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "United States Department of War."
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United States Secretary of War
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Secretary of War was a member of the President's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. The Secretary of War led the War Department. At first, he was responsible for all military affairs. In 1798, the Secretary of the Navy was added to the cabinet, and the scope of this office was reduced to a general concern with the Army. In 1947, the departments were recombined under the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of War was replaced by the Secretary of the Army, a non-Cabinet position under the Secretary of Defense.


The Secretaries of War




Name
Year appointed
President(s) served under


Henry Knox
1789
George Washington


Timothy Pickering
1795
Washington


James McHenry
1796
Washington, John Adams


Samuel Dexter
1800
John Adams


Henry Dearborn
1801-1809
Thomas Jefferson


William Eustis 
1809-1813
 James Madison 


John Armstrong, Jr
1813-1814
Madison


James Monroe
1814-1815
Madison


William Harris Crawford
1815-1816
Madison


John C. Calhoun
1817-1825
James Monroe


James Barbour
1825-1828
John Quincy Adams


Peter Buell Porter
1828-1829
John Quincy Adams


John Henry Eaton
1829-1831
 Andrew Jackson 


Lewis Cass
1831-1836
Jackson


Joel Roberts Poinsett
1837-1841
Martin Van Buren


John Bell
1841
William Henry Harrison,
John Tyler


John C. Spencer
1841-1843
Tyler


James Madison Porter
1843-1844
Tyler


William Wilkins
1844-1845
Tyler


William L. Marcy
1845-1849
James Polk


George Walker Crawford
1849-1850
Zachary Taylor


Charles Magill Conrad
1850-1853
Millard Fillmore


Jefferson Davis
1853-1857
Franklin Pierce


John Buchanan Floyd
1857-1860
James Buchanan


Joseph Holt
1861
Buchanan


Simon Cameron
1861-1862
Abraham Lincoln


Edwin M. Stanton
1862-1868
Lincoln, Andrew Johnson


John M. Schofield
1868-1869
Johnson


John Aaron Rawlins
1869
Ulysses Simpson Grant


William Tecumseh Sherman
1869
Grant


William W. Belknap
1869-1876
Grant


Alphonso Taft
1876
Grant


J. Donald Cameron
1876-1877
Grant


George Washington McCrary
1877-1879
Rutherford B. Hayes


Alexander Ramsey
1879-1881
Hayes


Robert Todd Lincoln
1881-1885
Chester Alan Arthur


William C. Endicott
1885-1889
Grover Cleveland


Redfield Proctor
1889-1891
Benjamin Harrison


Stephen B. Elkins
1891-1893
Harrison


Daniel Scott Lamont
1893-1897
Cleveland (2nd term)


Russell A. Alger
1897-1899
William McKinley


Elihu Root
1899-1904
McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt


William Howard Taft
1904-1908
Theodore Roosevelt


Luke Edward Wright
1908-1909
Theodore Roosevelt


Jacob M. Dickinson
1909-1911
William Howard Taft


Henry L. Stimson
1911-1913
Taft


Lindley M. Garrison
1913-1916
Woodrow Wilson


Newton D. Baker
1916-1921
Wilson


John W. Weeks
1921-1925
Warren G. Harding,

Calvin Coolidge


Dwight F. Davis
1925-1929
Coolidge


James W. Good
1929
Herbert Hoover


Patrick J. Hurley
1929-1933
Hoover


George H. Dern
1933-1936
Franklin Delano Roosevelt


Harry H. Woodring
1936-1940
FDR


Henry L. Stimson
1940-1945
FDR, Harry S. Truman


Robert P. Patterson
1945-1947
Truman


Kenneth C. Royall
1947
Truman




External link


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Vietnam War
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Vietnam War was a war fought between 1964 and 1975
on the ground in South Vietnam and bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos (see also, Secret War), and in bombing runs (Rolling Thunder) over North Vietnam. Fighting on one side was a coalition of forces including the Republic of Vietnam, the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Fighting on the other side was a coalition of forces including the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front (NLF, Viet Cong), a communist-led South Vietnamese guerrilla movement. The USSR and People's Republic of China provided military aid to the North Vietnamese and to the NLF, but they were not military combatants.  The war was part of a larger regional conflict involving the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos, known as the Second Indochina War.  In Vietnam, this conflict is known as the American War (Vietnamese Chiến Tranh Chống Mỹ Cứu Nước, literally War Against the Americans to Save the Nation).


Origins of the War

The Vietnam War was in many ways a direct successor to the French Indochina War, sometimes referred to as the First Indochina War, in which the  French fought, with the economic support of USA, to regain control of their former colony in Indochina, after the Japanese surrender, against the independence movement, Viet Minh led by Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh.
After the Viet Minh defeated the French colonial army at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the colony was granted independence. 

According to the ensuing  Geneva Conference, Vietnam was partitioned, ostensibly temporarily, into a Northern and Southern zones of Viet-Nam. The former was to be ruled by Ho Chi Minh, while the latter would be under the control of Emperor Bao Dai. In 1955 the South Vietnamese monarchy was abolished and Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem became President of a new South Vietnamese republic.

The Geneva accords specified that elections to unify the country would be scheduled to take place in June, 1956, but such elections were never held. The RVN government of President Diem, with the support of US President Eisenhower, had no interest in holding elections that threatened to bring Communist influences into the South's government. This was especially true after the north implemented a massive agricultural reform program, that distributed land to poor peasants, with an obvious influence on the electorate of the south. In addition the Communists were seen as highly unlikely to allow a free election in their half of Vietnam. Regardless, neither the US nor the two Vietnams had signed the election clause in the accord, and were thus not bound to honor it. Initially, it seemed that a partitioned Vietnam would become the norm, similar in nature to the partitioned Korea created years earlier.

After the communists consolidated their power in the North, they formed the National Liberation Front (NLF or Viet Cong) as a guerrilla movement in opposition to the South Vietnamese government. (The RVN and the US referred to the NLF as Viet Cong, short for Viet Nam Cong San, or "Vietnamese Communist" The NLF itself never called itself by this name). In response to the guerilla war, the United States began sending military advisors in support of the government in the South. North Vietnam and the USSR supported the NLF with arms and supplies, advisors, and regular units of the North Vietnamese Army, which were transported via an extensive network of trails and roads through the neutral nation of Laos, which became known as the Ho Chi Minh trail.


US Escalation


Vietcong casualties

US involvement in the war was a gradual process, with combat personnel arriving 1950. As its military involvement increased over the years under successive U.S. presidents, both Democrat and Republican (including Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon), despite warnings by the US military leadership against a major ground war in Asia.  There was never a formal declaration of war but there were a series of presidential decisions that increased the number of "military advisers" to the region. One of the first occurred on July 27, 1964 when 5,000 additional US military advisers were ordered sent to South Vietnam which brought the total number of US forces in Vietnam to 21,000. 

The single notable element of actual increased U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War during 1964 was a program of covert GVN operations, designed to impose "progressively escalating pressure" upon the North, and initiated on a small and essentially ineffective scale in February. The active U.S. role in the few covert operations that were carried out was limited essentially to planning, equipping, and training of the GVN forces involved, but U.S. responsibility for the launching and conduct of these activities was unequivocal and carried with it an implicit symbolic and psychological intensification of the U.S. commitment.


South Vietnam and Kennedy

The Kennedy administration efforts to contain North Vietnam occurred simultaneously with an effort to modernize the regime of the South. Kennedy strongly believed that if South Vietnam was a stable and democratic country, it would largely discredit the North and its Communist rhetoric. Aid to the South was often made on the condition that the government would undertake certain political reforms. Soon, US Government advisors were playing a prominent role in every level of South Vietnam's government. South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem had little time for these reforms, and was quite uncooperative. He would often go through the motions of these US-prescribed reforms, but in very superficial ways that ended up quite embarrassing for the US. For example, when he ran for election, only one opposition candidate was allowed, and there were widespread allegations of vote-rigging. Diem did not believe that US ideas of democracy were applicable to his government, since the country was still so young and unstable. Kennedy was accused of being overly naive and utopian in his belief that US values could be instantly imported into any country, no matter what their culture or history. 

Eventually, the Kennedy administration grew increasingly frustrated with Diem. In an embarrassing incident that was widely reported in the US press, Diem's forces launched a violent crackdown on Buddhist monks. Since Vietnam was a predominantly Buddhist nation, this action was viewed as further proof that Diem was completely out of touch with his people. US messages were sent to South Vietnamese generals encouraging them to act against Diem's excesses. Though there is some debate as to whether or not this was Kennedy's intention, the South Vietnamese military interpreted these messages as a call to arms, and staged a violent coup d'état, overthrowing and killing Diem. 

Far from uniting the country under new leaderhip, the death of Diem made the South even more unstable. The new military rulers were very unexperienced in political matters, and were unable to provide the strong central authority of Diem's rule. Coups and counter-coups plagued the country, which in turn served as a great inspiration to the efforts of the North. 

Shortly after Diem's death, Kennedy himself was assassinated, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was suddenly thrust into the war's leadership role. Newly sworn-in President Johnson confirmed on November 24, 1963 that the United States intended to continue supporting South Vietnam militarily and economically.


Gulf of Tonkin and Johnson

On July 31, 1964, and after a six month suspension, the American destroyer USS Maddox, began a reconnaissance mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. The purpose of the mission was to obtain information about the North Vietnamese coastal defense forces. The night before the USS Maddox was to resume her patrols off the North Vietnamese coast, South Vietnamese commandos raided two North Vietnamese islands.

Apparently mistaking the Maddox for South Vietnamese, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched a torpedo and machine gun attack on her. Responding immediately to the attack, and with the help of air support from the nearby carrier USS Ticonderoga, the Maddox destroyed one of the attacking boats and damaged the other two. The Maddox, suffering only superficial damage by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet, retired to South Vietnamese waters, where she was joined by the USS C. Turner Joy.

On August 3, GVN again attacked North Vietnam; the Rhon River estuary and the Vinh Sonh radar installation were bombarded under cover of darkness.

On August 4, a new DESOTO patrol to North Vietnam coast was launched, with the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy. The latter got radar signals that they believed to be another attack by the North Vietnamese. For some two hours the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously amid electronic and visual reports of torpedoes. Later, Captain John J. Herrick admitted that it was nothing more than an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing ship's own propeller beat."

The U.S. Senate then approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war "as the President shall determine". In a televised address Johnson claimed that "the challenge that we face in South-East Asia today is the same challenge that we have faced with courage and that we have met with strength in Greece and Turkey, in Berlin and Korea, in Lebanon and in Cuba," a dangerous mis-reading of the politics of the Vietnamese conflict. National Security Council members, including Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Maxwell Taylor agreed on November 28, 1964 to recommend that President Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.

On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines became the first American combat troops to land in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 US military advisers already in place. The air war escalated as well; On July 24, 1965, four F-4C Phantoms escorting a bombing raid at Kang Chi became the targets of antiaircraft missiles in the first such attack against American planes in the war. One plane was shot down and the other three sustained damage. Four days later Johnson announced another order that increased the number of US troops in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000. The day after that, July 29, the first 4,000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrived in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.

Then on August 18, 1965, Operation Starlite began as the first major American ground battle of the war when 5,500 US Marines destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in Quang Ngai Province. The Marines were tipped-off by a Viet Cong deserter who said that there was an attack planned against the US base at Chu Lai. The NVA learnt from their defeat and tried to avoid fighting a US-style war from then on.

The Pentagon told President Johnson on November 27, 1965 that if planned major sweep operations needed to neutralize Viet Cong forces during the next year were to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam needed to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. By the end of 1965 184,000 US troops were in Vietnam. In February 1966 there was a meeting between the commander of U.S. forces, General William Westmoreland and Johnson in Honolulu. Westmoreland argued that the US presence had prevented a defeat but that more troops were needed to take the offensive, he claimed that an immediate increase could lead to the "cross-over point" in Vietcong and NVA casualties being reached in early 1967. Johnson authorised an increasein troop numbers to 429,000 by August 1966.

On October 12, 1967 US Secretary of State Dean Rusk stated during a news conference that proposals by the United States Congress for peace initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's opposition. Johnson then held a secret meeting with a group of the nation's most prestigious leaders ("the Wise Men") on November 2 and asked them to suggest ways to unite the American people behind the war effort. They concluded that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war. Then based on reports he was given on November 13, Johnson told his nation on November 17 that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking...We are making progress." Following up on this, General William Westmoreland on November 21 told news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing." Two months later the Tet Offensive made both men regret their words. 

The continued escalation of American involvement came as the Johnson administration and Westmoreland, repeatedly assured the American public that the next round of troop increases would bring victory.  The American public's faith in the "light at the end of the tunnel" was shattered, however, on January 30, 1968, when the enemy, supposedly on the verge of collapse, mounted the Tet Offensive (named after Tet Nguyen Dan, the lunar new year festival which is the most important Vietnamese holiday) in South Vietnam (and, to a lesser degree, in the 1969 Post-Tet Offensive).  Although neither of these offensives accomplished any military objectives, the surprising capacity of an enemy that was supposedly on the verge of collapse to even launch such an offensive convinced many Americans that victory was impossible.  There was an increasing sense among many people that the government was misleading the American people about a war without a clear beginning or end.  When General Westmoreland called for still more troops to be sent to Vietnam, Clark Clifford, a member of Johnson's own cabinet, came out against the war.

Facing a troop shortage, on October 14, 1968 the United States Department of Defense announced that the United States Army and Marines would be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours. Two weeks later on October 31, citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announced to his nation that he had ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.  Peace talks eventually broke down, however, and one year later, on November 3, 1969, then President Richard M. Nixon addressesed the nation on television and radio asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies. 

The credibility of the government suffered when the New York Times, and later the Washington Post and other newspapers, published the Pentagon Papers. It was a top-secret historical study, contracted by the Pentagon, about the war, that showed how the government was misleading the US public, in all stages of the war, including the secret support of the French in the first Vietnam War.

Opposition to the War

There had been a small movement of opposition to the war within certain quarters of the United States starting in 1964, especially on certain college campuses.  This was happening during a time of unprecedented leftist student activism, and of the arrival at college age of the demographically significant "Baby Boomers." World War II ended in 1945, and the Korean conflict ended in 1953; thus most, if not all, of the "Baby Boomers" had never been exposed to war. In addition, the Vietnam War was unprecedented for the intensity of media coverage--it has been called the first television war--as well as for the stridency of opposition to the war by the so-called "New Left."  The international opinion condemn the US intervention in Vietnam, with massive rallies in almost all countries.

Many young men feared being sent to Vietnam, and hundreds of them fled to Canada or Sweden to avoid the draft.  At that time, not all men of draft age were actually conscripted; the Selective Service Board used a lottery system to select draftees.  Some men found sympathetic doctors who could find a medical basis for classifying as 4F, making them ineligible to be drafted.  Others took advantage of a student deferment.  Still others joined the National Guard or entered the Peace Corps as a way of avoiding Vietnam.  All of these issues raised concerns about the fairness of who got selected for combat, since it was often the poor or those without connections who were assigned to combat units. The draft itself also initiated protests when on October 15, 1965 the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States. The first draft lottery since World War II in the United States was held on December 1, 1969 and was met with large protests and a great deal of controversy; many people charged that the lotteries were skewed disproportionately toward men with late year birthdays and non-whites. This issue treated in length in a January 4, 1970 New York Times article titled "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random".  

The US people became polarized over the war.  Many supporters of the war argued for what was known as the Domino Theory, which held that if the South fell to communist guerillas, other nations, primarily in Southeast Asia, would succumb in short succession, much like falling dominoes.  Military critics of the war pointed out that the conflict was political and that the military mission lacked clear objectives.  Civilian critics of the war argued that the government of South Vietnam lacked political legitimacy, and that support for the war was immoral.

Gruesome images of two anti-war activists that set themselves on fire in November 1965 further eroded popular support for the war effort; On November 2 32-year-old Quaker member Norman Morrison set himself on fire in front of The Pentagon and on November 9 22-year old Catholic Worker member Roger Allen LaPorte did the same thing in front of the United Nations building. 

The growing anti-war movement alarmed many in the US government. On August 16, 1966 the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigations of Americans who were suspected of aiding the Viet Cong, with the intent to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested. 

On February 1, 1968, a suspected Viet Cong officer was summarily executed by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief.  Loan shot the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists.  The execution was filmed and photographed and helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war. Then on October 15, 1969 hundreds of thousands of people took part in National Moratorium antiwar demonstrations across the United States.  

Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong officer

The U.S. realized that the South Vietnamese government needed a solid base of popular support if it was to survive the insurgency.  In order to pursue this goal of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people, units of the United States Army, referred to as "Civil Affairs" units, were extensively utilized for the first time since World War II.

Civil Affairs units, while remaining armed and under direct military control, engaged in what came to be known as "nation building": constructing (or reconstructing) schools, public buildings, roads and other physical infrastructure; conducting medical programs for civilians who had no access to medical facilities; facilitating cooperation among local civilian leaders; conducting hygiene and other training for civilians; and similar activities.

This policy of attempting to win the "Hearts and Minds" of the Vietnamese people, however, often was at odds with other aspects of the war which served to antagonize many Vietnamese civilians.  These policies included the emphasis on "body count" as a way of measuring military success on the battlefield, the bombing of villages (symbolized by the phrase "it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it"), and the killing of civilians as such locations as in the My Lai massacre.  In 1974 the documentary "Hearts and Minds" dealt with these problems, and won an Academy Award for best documentary amid considerable controversy.  The South Vietnamese government also antagonized many of its citizens with its suppression of political opposition, through such measures as holding large numbers of political prisoners, torturing political opponents, and holding a one-man election for President in 1971.

Despite the increasingly depressing news on the war, many Americans continued to support President Johnson's endeavors.  Aside from the domino theory mentioned above, there was a feeling that the goal of preventing a communist takeover of a pro-Western government in South Vietnam was a noble objective.  Many Americans were also concerned about saving face in the event of disengaging from the war or, as President Nixon later put it, "achieving Peace with Honor."  

However, anti-war feelings also began to rise. Many Americans opposed the war on moral grounds, seeing it as a destructive war against Vietnamese independence, or as intervention in a foreign civil war; others opposed it because they felt it lacked clear objectives and appeared to be unwinnable.  Some anti-war activists were themselves Vietnam Veterans, as evidenced by the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War.


Anti-Vietnam war demonstration

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson began his re-election campaign.  A member of his own party, Eugene McCarthy, ran against him for the nomination on an antiwar platform.  McCarthy did not win the first primary election in New Hampshire, but he did surprisingly well against an incumbent.  The resulting blow to the Johnson campaign, taken together with other factors, led the President to make a surprise announcement in a March 31 televised speech that he was pulling out of the race.  He also announced the initiation of the Paris Peace Talks with Vietnam in that speech.  Then on August 4, 1969 US representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy began secret peace negotiations at the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris. The negotiations eventually failed, however. 

Seizing the opportunity caused by Johnson's departure from the race, Robert Kennedy then joined in and ran for the nomination on an antiwar platform.  Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, also ran for the nomination, promising to continue to support the South Vietnamese government.

Kennedy was assassinated that summer, and McCarthy was unable to overcome Humphrey's support within the party elite.  Humphrey won the nomination of his party, and ran against Richard Nixon in the general election. During the campaign, Nixon has been said to have claimed knowledge of a secret plan to end the war; this did not actually occur. His opponent for G.O.P. nomination, Gov. George Romney of Michigan, asked him "Where is your secret plan?" It has since been accepted that Nixon claimed to have a secret plan.

Opposition to the Vietnam War in Australia followed along similar lines to the United States, particularly with opposition to conscription.  Whilst Australian disengagement began in 1970 under John Gorton, it was not until the election of Gough Whitlam in 1972 that conscription ended.

Vietnamization

Nixon was elected President and began his policy of slow disengagement from the war.  The goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight the war on its own.  This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine."  As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called "Vietnamization."  The goal of Vietnamization was to enable the South Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its own against the NLF and the North Vietnamese Army.  During this period, the United States conducted a gradual troop withdrawal from Vietnam.  Nixon continued to use air power to bomb the enemy, and American soldiers continued to die in combat.  Ultimately, more American soldiers died, and more bombs were dropped, under the Nixon Presidency than under Johnson's.

Many significant gains in the war were made under the Nixon administration, however. One paticularly significant achievement was the weakening of support that the North Vietnamese army received from the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China. One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of a "breakthrough" in relations between the two nations, in terms of creating a new spirit of co-operation. To a large extent this was achieved, and through his many meetings with the leaders of the two Communist superpowers Nixon was able to convince them that North Vietnam was clearly the loosing side in the war. China and the USSR had been the principle backers of the North Vietnamese army through large amounts of military and financial support. The eagerness of both nations to improve their own US relations in the face of a widening breakdown of the inter-Communist alliance successfully led to the weakening of aid to North Vietnam. 

The morality of US conduct of the war continued to be an issue under the Nixon Presidency.  In 1969, it came to light that Lt. William Calley, a platoon Leader in Vietnam, had led a massacre of Vietnamese civilians (including small children) at My Lai a year before.  The massacre was only stopped after two American soldiers in a helicopter spotted the carnage and intervened to prevent their fellow Americans from killing any more civilians.  Although many were appalled by the wholesale slaughter at My Lai, Calley was given a light sentence after his court-martial in 1970, and was later pardoned by President Nixon.

In 1970, Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia in order to destroy NLF sanctuaries bordering on South Vietnam.  This action prompted even more protests on American college campuses. Several students were shot to death by National Guard troops during demonstrations at Kent State in an incident called the Kent State massacre.  

One effect of the incursion was to push communist forces deeper into Cambodia, which destabilized the country and which in turn may have led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who seized power in 1975.  The goal of the attacks, however, was to bring the North Vietnamese negotiators back to the table with some flexibility in their demands that the South Vietnamese government be overthrown as part of the agreement.  It was also alleged that American and South Vietnamese casualty rates were reduced by the destruction of military supplies the communists had been storing in Cambodia.

In an effort to help assuage growing discontent over the war, Nixon announced on October 12, 1970 that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas. Later that month on October 30, the worst monsoon to hit Vietnam in six years caused large floods, killed 293, left 200,000 homeless and virtually halted the war. 

Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos on February 13, 1971. Then on August 18 of that year, Australia and New Zealand decided to withdraw their troops from Vietnam.  The total number of American troops in Vietnam dropped to a record low of 196,700 on October 29, 1971 (the lowest level since January 1966). On November 12, 1971 Nixon set a February 1, 1972 deadline as to remove another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam. 

In the 1972 election, the war was once again a major issue in the United States.  An antiwar candidate, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon.  Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, declared that "Peace is at Hand" shortly before the voters went to the polls, dealing a death blow to McGovern's campaign, which had been facing an uphill battle.  However, the peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading many to conclude that Kissinger's announcement was just a political ploy.  Kissinger's defenders assert that the North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the Nixon Administration to weaken it at the negotiation table. White House Press Secretary Ron Zeigler on November 30, 1972 told the press that there woould be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels were then down to 27,000. The US halted heavy bombing of North Vietnam on December 30, 1972.

The End of the War

On January 15, 1973, citing progress in peace negotiations, President Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam which was later followed by a unilateral withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords were later signed on January 27, 1973 which officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. The first American prisoners of war were released on February 11 and all US soldiers were ordered to leave by March 29. Unlike previous American wars, soldiers returning from the Vietnam War were not treated as heroes, and soldiers were sometimes even condemned for their participation in the war.

The peace agreement did not last.







South Vietnamese civilians scramble to board the last US helicopter leaving the country.






Although Nixon had promised South Vietnam that he would provide military support to them in the event of a crumbling military situation, Congress voted down any further funding of military actions in the region. Nixon was also fighting for his political life in the growing Watergate scandal, so none of the promised military support to defend the South Vietnamese government was forthcoming.  Although some small amounts of economic aid continued, most of it was siphoned off by corrupt elements in the South Vietnamese government and little of it actually went to the war effort. The 94th Congress eventually voted for a total cut off of all aid to take effect at the beginning of the 1975-76 financial year (July 1, 1975). At the same time aid to North Vietnam from the USSR and China began to increase, as with the Americans out, the two countries no longer saw the war significant to their US relations. The balance of power had clearly shifted to the North. 

In early 1975 the North invaded the South and quickly consolidated the country under its control. Saigon was captured on April 30, 1975. North Vietnam united both North and South Vietnam on July 2, 1976 to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was re-named Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the former president of North Vietnam. Hundreds of supporters of the South Vietnamese government were rounded up and executed, many more were imprisoned. Communist rule continues to this day.

On January 21, 1977 American President Jimmy Carter pardoned nearly all Vietnam War draft evaders. 


Casualties

Estimating the number killed in the conflict is extremely difficult. Official records are hard to find or nonexistent and many of those killed were literally blasted to pieces by bombing. For many years the North Vietnamese suppressed the true number of their casualties for propaganda purposes. It is also difficult to say exactly what counts as a "Vietnam war casualty"; people are still being killed today by unexploded ordinance, particularly cluster bomblets. Environmental effects from chemical agents and the colossal social problems caused by a devastated country with so many dead surely caused many more lives to be shortened. In addition, the Khmer Rouge would probably not have come into power and committed their slaughters without the destabilization of the war, particularly of the American bombing campaigns to 'clear out the sanctuaries' in Cambodia.

The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese statements, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. 58,226 American soldiers also died in the war or are missing in action. Australia lost almost 500 of the 47,000 troops they had deployed to Vietnam and New Zealand lost 38 soldiers. 

In the aftermath of the war many Americans came to believe that some of the 2,300 American soldiers listed as "Missing in Action" had in fact been taken prisoner by the DRV and held indefinitely. "Missing in Action" is a term applied to missing soldiers whose status cannot be determined through eyewitness accounts of their death, or a body. While little credible evidence has been shown for this, images of tortured, emaciated prisoners of war (notably in the sequel to Rambo) continue to evoke anger among many Americans. The Vietnamese list over 200,000 of their own soldiers Missing in Action, and MIA soldiers from World War I and II continue to be unearthed in Europe.

Both during and after the war, significant human rights violations occurred.  Both North and South Vietnamese had large numbers of political prisoners, many of whom were killed or tortured.  In 1970, two American congressmen visiting South Vietnam discovered the existence of "tiger cages", which were small prison cells used for torturing South Vietnamese political prisoners.  After the war, actions taken by the victors in Vietnam, including firing squads, torture, concentration camps and "re-education," led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.  Many of these refugees fled by boat and thus gave rise to the phrase "boat people." They emigrated to Hong Kong, France, the United States, Canada, and other countries, creating sizable expatriate communities, notably in the United States.

Many effects of the animosity and ill will generated during the Vietnam War are still felt today among those who lived through this turbulent time in American and Indochinese history.


Analysis

The Vietnam war had many long term repercussions, especially for the American society and foreign policy. 

Firstly, the war was America's first significant military defeat. This was very damaging for America's reputation as a global superpower, which had previously seemed almost invincible. The massive American casualties and lack of a decisive victory also created a great distaste for foreign wars among the American public. Indeed, not until the Gulf War, nearly 15 years later, would the United States commit comparable amounts of troops to fight in a foreign country. 

Politically, the war's poor planning and "blank check" legislation led to Congress reviewing current terms of war, and passing new legislation to guarantee themselves a larger, and more clearly defined role in the planning of any future Vietnam-style conflicts. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 greatly curtailed the President's ability to commit troops to action without first obtaining Congressional approval. The use of the defoliation agent known as Agent Orange, designed to destroy the hiding places of the Viet Cong, has caused many health maladies and birth defects to this day. 

From a social point of view, the war was a key time in the lives of many younger Americans, especially the so-called baby boom generation. Protestor and soldier alike, the war created many strong opinions in regards to American foreign policy and the justness of war. As a result, the Vietnam was also significant in showing the degree that the public can influence government policy through mobilization and protest. 

Service in the war, though initially unpopular, soon became respected even though the war itself was not. Past service in Vietnam became important to the election of many future American politicians; for example, it was a factor in the election of John McCain, a former Vietnam POW, to the US Senate. The fact that President Bill Clinton had avoided service was a major source of controversy during his election campaign. 

After taking office, Bill Clinton announced his desire to heal relations with Vietnam. His administration lifted economic sanctions on the country in 1994, and in May 1995 the two nations renewed diplomatic relations, with the US opening up an embassy on Vietnamese soil for the first time since 1975. 


Lists


Major Operations of Vietnam War with launching dates


Major battles of Vietnam War


Major bombing campaigns of Vietnam War


Major figures of Vietnam War


United States


Cambodia


North Vietnam


South Vietnam

See also: History -- Military history -- War 


External link


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War
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

War is any conflict involving the organized use of armss and physical force between countries or other large-scale armed groups. 

International law has attempted to reduce the mutually destructive results of war.  The signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the development of the United Nations System have succeeded in discouraging the description of any specific instance of warfare, by its participants, as a war. This process has been aided by such terminologies as 

See Articles 2(3), 2(4) and 2(7) of the United Nations Charter.

Carl von Clausewitz wrote in his classic text, On War: "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" ("War is merely a continuation of politics by other means") and "War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will."  

Wars have been fought to control natural resources, for religious or cultural reasons, over political balances of power, legitimacy of particular laws, to settle economic and territorial disputes, and many other issues. The roots of any war
are very complex - there is usually more than one issue involved.

Types of war

Sometimes a distinction is made between a conflict and the formal declaration of a state of war. Those who make this distinction often restrict the term "war" to those conflicts where the countries have formally declared such a state. Smaller armed conflicts are often called riots, rebellions, coupss, etc. 

When one country sends armed forces to another allegedly to restore order or prevent genocide or other crimes against humanity, or to support a legally recognized government against insurgency, that country sometimes refers to it as a police action. This usage is not always recognized as valid, however, particularly by those who do not accept the connotations of the term.

A war where the forces in conflict belong to the same country or empire or other political entity is known as a civil war.

War is contrasted with peace, which is usually defined as the absence of war.

Another approach to classifying warfare divides it into four "generations" of war.


First generation warfare

First generation warfare reflects tactics of the era of the smoothbore musket, the tactics of line and column. Operational art in the first generation did not exist as a concept although it was practiced by individual commanders, most prominently Napoleon.


Second generation warfare

Second generation warfare was developed in response to the rifled musket, breechloaders, barbed wire, the machinegun, and indirect fire. Tactics were based on fire and movement but they remained essentially linear, with defenses still attempting to prevent all penetrations and attacks laterally dispersed along a line advanced by rushes in small groups. Second generation tactics remained the basis of U.S. doctrine until the 1980s, and they are still practiced by most American units in the field.


Third generation warfare

Third generation warfare was first developed by the Germans in World War I, to compensate for their inability to match their enemies' industrial output. Its tactics were the first truly nonlinear tactics; attacks rely on infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemy's combat forces rather than seeking to close with and destroy them, and defense was in depth and often invited penetration to set the enemy up for a counterattack.


Fourth generation warfare

Fourth generation warfare is widely dispersed and largely undefined, with a blurred distinction between war and peace and few clear battlefields or fronts. Indeed, it may be difficult to even identify which organizations and individuals are actively participating in the war. Actions will occur concurrently throughout all participants' depth, including their society as a cultural, not just a physical, entity.

Laws of war

A number of treaties regulate warfare, collectively referred to as the Laws of war. The most pervasive of those are the Geneva conventions, the earliest of which began to take effect in the mid 1800s. 

Treaty signing has since been a part of international diplomacy, and too many treaties to mention in this scant article have been signed. A couple of examples are: Resolutions of the Geneva International Conference, Geneva, 26-29 October 1863 and Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 75 U.N.T.S. 135, entered into force Oct. 21, 1950.


Statistical analysis

The statistical analysis of war was pioneered by Lewis Fry Richardson following World War I.  More recent databases of wars have been assembled by the Correlates of War Project [1] and Peter Brecke [2].


See also
  


Military, Military technology and equipment, Military history, Military strategy, Military tactics, Just war, Frontline, Military-industrial complex, Weapon, Laws of war, Medieval warfare, World war, war profiteer, Attacks on humanitarian workers.


External links



For the 1970s funk band, see War (band).
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "War."
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War (band)
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
War was an American funk band of the 1970s and early 1980s.  The roots of the band are from 1962, when Howard Scott and Harold Brown formed a group called the Creators in Compton, California (see 1962 in music).  Within a few years, they had added Charles Miller, B.B. Dickerson and Lonnie Jordan.  They recorded several singles on Dore Records and worked with Jay Contreli (of Love).  In 1968, the Creators became Nightshift and started performing with Deacon Jones, a football player and singer (see 1968 in music).  At a performance, producer Jerry Goldstein suggested they work with Eric Burdon (of the Animals) and Lee Oskar (a Danish harmonica player).

Burdon changed the name to War and the new line-up, with Oskar, began recording in 1969 and released Eric Burdon Declares War in 1970 (see 1970 in music).  "Spill the Wine" became a hugely popular single, and the follow-up, The Black Man's Burdon, was almost as successful as the first.  In 1971, Burdon left the group in the middle of a European tour, claiming he was too exhausted to go on (see 1971 in music).  After a highly unsuccessful album, War, War's The World Is a Ghetto reestablished them at the forefront of popular funk and included two hits, "Gypsy Man" and "The Cisco Kid".  Why Can't We Be Friends (1975 in music) sold well, and included "Low Rider", perhaps their most well-remembered song during 1976 in music.  A compilation of jams called Platinum Jazz was a surprise success in 1977 (see 1977 in music).

The line-up began to fall apart in 1978 when Dickerson quit and Charles Miller was murdered (see 1978 in music).  After a few unsuccessful attempts at recouping, War's Outlaw (1982 in music) was a moderate success, but the group was unable to keep any momentum as members came and went.  By 1984, War was a touring band only.  A comeback was attempted in 1994 with Peace Sign, but the album flopped (see 1994 in music).
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "War (band)."
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War (card game)
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
This card game is for two players. Standard Western 52-card deck. Ace high.

Deal each player half the deck.

Both players play simultaneously. Each player shows one card, and whoever has the higher card takes both cards shown. In case of a tie, both players play three face-down cards and one face-up card, and these face-up cards decide it. If there is another tie, the process is repeated, etc. In all cases of ties, face-down cards are exposed before being collected. In one variation, only one face down card. And in a bloodthirsty variation, the number of face down cards equals the pip value of the cards, with face cards being ten and ace eleven.

When a player runs out of face-down cards to play, they turn over their pile of collected cards and use it. Whoever has no card to play when they are required to play one is the loser.



In appearance, this very much seems to be a game of chance. However, an excellent memory and a skillful and quick hand can be used to do something which seems like cheating but isn't.

What you do is this: Let us say that you begin the game by beating my 6 with your 10. I notice that your face-up pile has the 10 on top, so the order of cards in it is 6, 10. Then I beat your 8 with my Jack. I will collect the 8 first so that the next pass through the deck will begin 8 beats 6 (I collect), Jack beats 10 (I collect again). If I had collected the Jack first, it would be Jack beats 6 (I collect), 10 beats 8 (you collect). However, if the other players see you scheming like this, they will probably try to stop the game.

Another way to cheat is to take advantage of an opponent who isn't paying attention.  You play a Jack and the other person plays a Queen, but you claim the trick.



There was an old Apple II version of this game, contained in the game "little computer people".  In the game, the winner of each trick always put the cards on the bottom of the deck in the same order.  Frequently, the game wound up cycling.  That is, the same positions would repeat indefinitely with no winner.



War may be played with more than 2 players.  A war occurs only when the 2 highest cars tie.  The war may involve only those players, or all players.


Another interesting variant

Add jokers to the deck.  If a joker is played, there is an automatic war.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "War (card game)."
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War on Terrorism
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Immediately following and in response to the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack, the United States government announced its intentions to begin a War on Terrorism (or War on Terror), a protracted struggle against terrorists and states that aid terrorists.  On October 10, 2001, US President George W. Bush presented a list of 22 most wanted terrorists. Then in the first such act since World War II, President Bush signed an executive order on November 13, 2001 allowing military tribunals against any foreigners suspected of having connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States. US-led military forces later invaded both Afghanistan (see U.S. invasion of Afghanistan) and Iraq (see 2003 Iraq War) under the rubric of the War on Terrorism. 

Many governments have pledged their support for the initiative. The US has received military help from the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, India, The Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Japan, Pakistan, Poland, and France, among others, though much of the support was fairly limited. The War on Terrorism quickly became the dominant framework in which international relations were analyzed, supplanting the old Cold War and in some cases the War on Drugs.  Many pre-existing disputes were re-cast in terms of the War on Terrorism, including Plan Colombia and the Colombian civil war; the United States' diplomatic and military disputes with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea; the war between Russia and Chechnya; and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The two largest campaigns undertaken as part of the War have been those in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Although many countries are involved, making arrests of suspected terrorists, freezing bank accounts and participating in military action, the war is overwhelmingly viewed as an American initiative.  

There was a previous War on Terrorism declared during the 1980s, by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, though it never gained as much widespread support or traction as the current one.


Overall Strategy

The United States has based its counter-terrorist strategy on several steps:

In doing so, the strategy is not very different from successful counter-guerrilla operations, such as in Malaysia in the 1950s.  There is a fine distinction between guerrilla operations and terrorist operations.  Many guerrilla organizations, such as the Zionist armed group known as the Irgun in British-Mandated Palestine, and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) during the Algerian Civil War, and the Viet Cong, included urban terrorism as part of their overall strategy.  

Denial of safe havens involves a fairly large military force; however, as in Afghanistan in 2002, once the major safe haven areas are overrun, the large-scale forces can be withdrawn and special forces, such as U.S. Special Operations Forces or the British Special Air Service (SAS), operate more effectively. 

In addition, the U.S. Army is involved in increasingly large civil affairs programs in Afghanistan to provide employment for Afghans and to reduce sympathy in the civilian population for parties the United States has designated as terrorist.

The U.S. strategy faces several obstacles:

Interrogation methods

A Washington Post investigation published on December 26, 2002 quotes anonymous CIA and other government officials who claim that US military and CIA personnel employ physical coercion during their interrogation of suspects and that US officials believe these practices are necessary and unavoidable in light of the September 11th terrorist attacks. They state that CIA is using "stress and duress" techniques at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, a base leased from Britain at Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, and numerous other secret facilities worldwide.  

The CIA reportedly transfers suspects, along with a list of questions, to foreign intelligence services of countries routinely criticized by the US Department of State for torturing suspects, where they are alleged to be severely tortured with the assent and encouragement of the United States.  These countries include Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Syria.  One official stated, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." (See also the article on Maher Arar.

Anonymous sources quoted in the Washington Post article have stated that those held in the CIA detention center "are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles," and are duct-taped to stretchers for transport. The Post continues that according to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment, that suspects are often beat up and confined in tiny rooms and are also blindfolded and handcuffed following arrest. Later, suspects are sometimes "held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights" and loud noises. The Post article goes on to say that national security officials suggested that pain killers, on at least one occasion, were "used selectively" to treat a detainee that was shot in the groin during apprehension.

The United States State Department has previously described such interrogation tactics as "abusive tactics".  The 1999 State Department Human Rights Country Report on Israel and the Occupied Territories [1] stated:

"However, a landmark decision by the High Court of Justice in September prohibited the use of a variety of abusive practices, including violent shaking, painful shackling in contorted positions, sleep deprivation for extended periods of time, and prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures."

Nevertheless, the Post admits that there is no direct evidence that the US government is mistreating prisoners. Additionally, as reported by Reuters,  the U.S. military denied these allegations and stated that the Post's article was "false on several points". [1]

National security officials interviewed for the investigation defended the use of such techniques as necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks.  As one official put it, "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job." 

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch called on the United States to respond to these reports by publicly denouncing the use of torture.  In response to reports that some of the evidence that Colin Powell intended to present against Iraq to the United Nations was derived from torture, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Powell, asking him to use that speech as an opportunity to condemn any use of torture to gather intelligence.  [1]

The techniques reported to be used are similar to techniques that have been used by the Soviet Union on captured CIA operatives, according to accounts by retired CIA agents.  In addition, similar techniques were used by French security services in the Algerian War of Independence and in the suppression of the Secret Army Organization in the 1960s.  Ethically, such techniques are seen by human rights advocates as deplorable, but interrogators see them as necessary when information must be gained from a reluctant subject.

Human rights advocates point out that torture can generate false responses; tortured suspects may give interrogators false information in order to stop the torture. Therefore, the use of torture may actually hurt the War on Terror.


Military/Diplomatic Campaigns



Afghanistan

Main article: U.S. invasion of Afghanistan

The first target was Afghanistan and the Al-Qaida terrorist organisation based therein. The US demanded that the Taliban government extradite Saudi exile and Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden with no preconditions. The Taliban responded first by asking to see proof that bin Laden was behind the attacks. When the United States refused and instead threatened the Taliban with military action, the Taliban offered to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan, where he could be tried under Islamic law. This offer too was refused. The United States and other western nations then led an attack along with local Afghan anti-Taliban forces, including several local warlords and the Northern Alliance.  Many of the Afghani groups had held power before the Taliban came to power, and ruled with human rights records similar to the Taliban. This effort succeeded in removing the Taliban from power.  Most Taliban did not fight; they simply went back to their tribe. The weak government in Kabul, the well armed Warlords and the hidden Taliban did not change the situation, that Afghanistan is a unstable country. To date, Osama bin Laden has not been arrested or killed. His words have reportedly come to light from time to time, often via Arabic media outlets, and usually in support of anti-western atrocities, such as the bombing in Bali and Tunisia.  

On March 2, 2003, authorities in Pakistan announced the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks.


The Naming of the "Axis of Evil"

Main Article Axis of Evil

George W. Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil". In US political rhetoric these are called "rogue states" who do not respect international law and often have programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. The use of the word "axis" was more rhetorical than literal; no assertions have been made that Iran, Iraq, or North Korea are in any way politically allied (The former Ba'athist regime in Iraq and the Shi'ite fundamentalist regime in Iran were enemies). The statement has become a lightning rod for opposition to the War on Terrorism and to George W. Bush in particular. Interestingly, the inclusion of North Korea in the "Axis of Evil" subtly served to politically distance the US from the perception that the "war on terror" was a codephrase for a "war against Islam". (For more on opposition, see below.)


Iraq

Main articles: 2003 invasion of Iraq and U.S. plan to invade Iraq

The United States and Iraq have been involved in military and diplomatic disputes since the Gulf War in 1990-91, continuing through the remainder of George H. W. Bush's presidency, Bill Clinton's presidency and the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency. On September 4, 2002, George W. Bush announced the Bush Doctrine that the United States had the right to launch a preemptive military strike at any nation that could put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists. He sought and obtained congressional approval for a strike against Iraq.

Intensive negotiations began with other members of the United Nations Security Council, especially the three permanent members of the Council with veto power, Russia, China, and France, which are known to have reservations about an invasion of Iraq.  On November 8, 2002, the Security Council unanimously passed a new resolution, calling for Iraq to disarm or face tough consequences. On November 18, UN weapons inspectors returned to Iraq for the first time in four years. In early December, 2002, Iraq filed a 12,000-page weapons declaration with the UN. After reviewing the document, the U.S., Britain, France and other countries felt that the declaration failed to account for all of Iraq's chemical and biological agents. 

On January 16, 2003 U.N. inspectors discovered 11 empty 122 mm chemical warhead components not previously declared by Iraq. Iraq dismissed the warheads as old weapons that had been packed away and forgotten. After performing tests on the warheads, U.N. inspectors believe that they were new. While the warheads are evidence of an Iraqi weapons program, they may not amount to a "smoking gun", according to U.S. officials, unless some sort of chemical agent is also detected. U.N. inspectors also searched the homes of several Iraqi scientists. 

As of September 25, 2003, no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq by occupation forces.  Indeed, on September 24, 2003, the British Broadcasting Company reported that the United States' Iraq Survey Group's draft report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq states that none whatsoever have been discovered [1].

Although the invasion and occupation of Iraq is portrayed by the Bush administration as part of the War on Terrorism, some members of Congress, especially members of the Democratic Party, have suggested that the War on Iraq draws focus away from the War on Terrorism. This appears to not be the case, considering that major operations and arrests continue to take place all over the world as part of the War on Terrorism. Newsweek conducted a poll after the 2002 elections and found that a majority believed that this played a large part in the Republican victory during the elections.

Despite attempts by the CIA and US administration, certain Republican politicians and the government of Israel to prove one, some critics claim that there is no demonstrable link between the Iraqi government and any anti-American terrorist group. 

Israel has claimed that it is in possession of documents linking Saddam Hussein to terrorist groups in the region. In 2002, hundreds of documents were turned over to the news media and the US government that detail Iraq's support of suicide bombers, but some remain skeptical. Israel has also claimed that a terrorist cell that was captured in September of 2002 not only had links to Iraq, but actually received training there. Indeed, to the fundamentalist brand of Islam that al-Qaida propagates, the secular government of Iraq is clearly anathema. 

There is considerable evidence that the government of Saddam Hussein gave payments to the families of suicide bombers. These payments probably served to increase the number of attacks against Israel, although Israel generally responded by knocking down the houses of suicide bombers so as to force families to spend the Iraqi money on rebuilding their home.

Around the world, the threats to Iraq from the US and Britain have led to a rise in scepticism over the motives for invasion and the "war" in general. 

In early 2003, CIA director George Tenet reported that an al-Qaida cell is operating inside Baghdad, although no evidence of assistance from the government of Saddam Hussein to this cell has been revealed publicly.


North Korea

Main article: George W. Bush administration policy toward North Korea

In October 2002 North Korea announced that it was running a nuclear weapon development program, in violation of treaties, and said they would be willing to negotiate a new position with the United States. The response from the United States government has been muted; they have stated that North Korea is not as great a danger as Iraq, and do not seem to be willing to pursue the interventionist policy they are advocating for in Iraq.

On August 6, 2003, North Korea and Iran plan to form an alliance to develop long-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Under the plan, North Korea will transport missile parts to Iran for assembly at a plant near Tehran, Iran.


Iran

As mentioned, the nation is part of the "axis of evil".  The United States State Department refers to the Islamic Republic of Iran as the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism." Iran provides funding, weapons, and training to terrorist groups based in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia.  Iran funding of Islamic terrorist groups include Hezbollah (founded with help of Iran), Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Kurdistan Workers Party (among others).

Iran was involved with Hezbollah's attempt to smuggle arms to the Palestinian Authority in January 2002. On August 6, 2003, North Korea and Iran plan to form an alliance to develop long-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Under the plan, North Korea will transport missile parts to Iran for assembly at a plant near Tehran, Iran.

There has been speculation about the administrations plans, and Iran is seen by some as 'next on the list' -- both because of its "axis of evil" status and its geopolitical relationship with Iraq. Reformist elements (including leaders and the public) in Iran are challenging the hard-liners' policies, intolerant fundamentalism, and anti-Western viewpoints.


Pankisi Gorge (Georgia)

Main article: War on Terrorism: Pankisi Gorge

In February 2002, the U.S. sent approximately two hundred Special Operations Forces troops to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to train Georgian troops to fight rebels from the breakaway Russian province Chechnya, crossing the border for safe haven in their war with Russia. This move drew protests from many Russians, who believed that Georgia should remain within the Russian sphere of influence, and not the United States'. On March 1, 2002, over domestic outcry, Russian president Vladimir Putin met with Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze in Kazakhstan and pledged his support for the American military initiative. 


Yemen

Main article: War on Terrorism: Yemen

The Bush Administration approved sending about 100 Special Operations forces to Yemen, a power base for Al-Qaida.  The Special Operations forces, along with the CIA, are engaged in targeted attacks on suspected Al-Qaida members, especially in the regions of Yemen bordering Saudi Arabia, which are not well-controlled by the central Yemeni authorities.


Philippines

Main article: War on Terrorism: Philippines

In January 2002, a U.S. force approximately 1,000 strong was sent to assist Philippine forces. About 600 troops, including 160 Special Operations forces, remain training forces in the Philippines to combat Abu Sayyaf on Basilan. On October 2, 2002, a bomb in Zamboanga killed a U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant and two civilians.  In October 2002 additional Zamboanga bombings killed six and wounded 200.  In February 2003, the U.S. sent approximately 1700 soldiers to the Philippines to engage in active combat against Abu Sayyaf, as opposed to training.


Indonesia

Main Article: War on Terrorism: Indonesia

Near the end of 2001, Congress relaxed restrictions put into place in 1999 against the U.S. training of Indonesian forces because of human rights abuses in East Timor. In October 2002 the Bali car bombing killed and wounded hundreds of civilians, the majority of whom were foreign tourists.


Syria and Lebanon

Syria and Lebanon are hosting the headquarters of several terrorist organization (according to the State Department list and the EU list) such as Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The USA is also upset about the passage of Arab militants to Iraq through the Syrian border. The White House declared it holds Syria accountable for supporting terrorism and threaten to cast sanctions over Syria.


Israel, West Bank, Gaza Strip

Both Israel and the USA define the following militias as terrorists: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the PPLF and the PDLF. 
The USA called on Palestinian Authority to dismantle the Palestinian terrorist groups who targets Israeli civilians. The US government expressed great concern about the suicide bombers, which became popular among other Muslim terror groups such as Al-Qaeda. The Palestinians refuse to dismantle those groups and claim they are legitimate political factions who fight against occupation.
The Israeli Defence Forces conducted a lot of counter-terrorism operations in order to thwart suicide bombings. US army officers studied Israeli operations and methods and even held joint trainings. The US army adopted some of the Israeli methods such as missile-strike on terror leaders, the use of armoured bulldozers in urban warfare and new techniques for gathering military intelligence.
In addition to agreed-upon terrorist organizations, the US also includes Kach, an ultra-nationalist Israeli organization on its official list of terrorist organizations, and recently added support of their websites to be an act of supporting terrorism.
The USA also has a political involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and acts as a negotiator between the two parties, in order to solve the conflict in a peaceful manner.


Detentions at Guantanamo Bay

Many people captured in the military conflict in Afghanistan have been detained at a facility known as Camp X-ray at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and have been treated as illegal combatants rather than POWs. Many persons state that the term 'illegal combatant' has no meaning under international law and serves to justify denying these detainees rights granted to POWs under the Geneva convention.  However, the U.S. position is that the detainees do not fall under any of the categories of combatants or noncombatants protected by the Geneva or Hague conventions (See Camp X-ray for further details.)


U.S. Domestic Initiatives

A $40 billion emergency spending bill was quickly passed by the United States legislature, and an additional $20 billion bail-out of the airline industry was also passed.  Investigations have been started through many branches of many governments, pursuing tens of thousands of tips. Thousands of people have been detained, arrested, and/or questioned.  Many of those targeted by the Bush administration have been secretly detained, and have been denied access to an attorney.  Among those secretly detained are U.S. citizens.  For more, see September_11,_2001_Terrorist_Attack/Detentions.  The Justice Department launched a Special Registration procedure for certain male non-citizens in the US, requiring them to register in person at INS offices.  

Several laws were passed to increase the investigative powers of law enforcement agencies in the United States, notably the USA PATRIOT Act. Many civil liberties groups have alleged that these laws remove important restrictions on governmental authority, and are a dangerous encroachment on civil liberties, possible unconstitutional violations of the Fourth Amendment. However, no official legal challenges have been launched so far.

The Bush administration launched an unprecedented and sweeping initiative in early 2002 with the creation of the Information Awareness Office, designed to collect, index, and consolidate all available information on everyone in a central repository for perusal by the United States government.

Various government bureaucracies which handled security and military functions were reorganized.  Most notably, the Department of Homeland Security was created to coordinate "homeland security" efforts in the largest reorganization of the US federal government since the creation of the Pentagon.  There was a proposal to create an Office of Strategic Influence for the purpose of coordinating propaganda efforts, but it was cancelled due to negative reactions.  For the first time ever, the Bush administration implemented the Continuity of Operations Plan (or Continuity of Government) to create a shadow government to ensure the executive branch of the U.S. government would be able to continue in catastrophic circumstances.


U.S. Citizens Overseas

Overturning previous regulations which prevented the CIA from operating against US citizens, President Bush has granted the CIA broad authority to secretly assassinate U.S. citizens (in addition to anyone else) anywhere in the world if the CIA thinks that they are working for Al Qaida. The individuals in question need not be tried or convicted in any court of law, or even formally charged in order for them to be targeted for assassination. [1]


Opposition to the War

Initial opposition to the War on Terrorism was limited in the United States and Europe.  On September 14, when the United States House of Representatives voted on a bill authorizing the President of the United States to use force in the War on Terrorism, there was only one dissenting vote--Representative Barbara Lee of California.  Much of the opposition that existed came from the long-standing peace movement as well as the anti- or alternative globalization movement (e.g. the Independent Media Center broadened its focus from globalization and corporations to militarization).  The leadership of the German Green Party, known for its pacifist principles, supported the attack, but condemned the use of cluster bombs.  This support led to an internal division within the party and a confidence vote called by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, in which he retained the support of enough Greens to stay on.  Those Greens who voted against the government were later punished by being removed from the party list in the 2002 elections.  Similar internal divisions arose in the United States political left, with some prominent opponents of the Vietnam War, like Christopher Hitchens, supporting the War on Terrorism. However, many more veterans of the Vietnam War have come out against the war against Iraq.

Over time, opposition to the War has grown across the US and Europe and begun to take form in mass protests.  There have been street protests against the War on Terrorism in general or war on Iraq in particular in many major cities in the U.S. and other nations, many of them the largest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War.  On the 15th of February 2003, 1,000,000 people rallied against the War on the streets of London, representing diverse political, religious and other groups in what was described by the BBC as the largest demonstration the capital has seen. This was at a time when public feeling in Britain against a war was running high, with a clear majority in the polls.  On the 26th of October 2002, protesters joined on the Mall in Washington D.C., the area adjacent to the highest offices of government. While the Park Services no longer makes estimates regarding the size of protests on the Mall, the Washington Post estimated about 100,000 people attended, quoting police and park officials as saying that this anti-war protest may have been the largest since the Vietnam War.  In contrast to other recent protests, in which protesters reported being violently attacked by police or security forces, protesters in this action were evidently permitted to speak and assemble more freely.  On the same day protest rallies also took place in Mexico, Japan, Spain, Germany, South Korea, Belgium and Australia.

U.S. and European critics of the War on Terror make many different arguments in their opposition to  the War.  Some argue that the War unjustly results in the deaths of non-combatants (collateral damage).  An alternate version of this argument is that the War is being fought in a way intended to minimize deaths to allied soldiers without regard to the effect on non-combatants.  (See, e.g., Ten Reasons Why Women Should Oppose the "War on Terrorism".) Another prevalent theme in opposition literature is that the War is "sowing the seeds of future terrorism and violence" by creating conditions of poverty and desperation (Artists' petition against the war). Many believe that the interrogation methods employed by the CIA violate international conventions against torture.

A common analysis is that the War is being fought "to establish a new political framework within which [the US] will exert hegemonic control."  (World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board)  Many say the US seeks to do this by controlling access to oil or oil pipelines.  Similarly, many argue that the War is being fought to benefit domestic political allies of the Bush administration, especially arms manufacturers.

Many opponents of the war focus on the domestic aspects, complaining that the government is systematically removing civil liberties from the population or engaging in racial profiling.  Other criticisms of domestic policy are focused on the individuals given leadership roles in War on Terrorism-related posts.  In November 2002, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was appointed as the chairman of the independent panel investigating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America. His appointment led to widespread criticism, mainly because he is wanted by France, Spain, Chile, and Argentina for questioning in connection with war crimes he allegedly had knowledge of and directed while serving as Secretary of State during the Nixon and Ford administrations. John Poindexter was appointed head of the Information Awareness Office (IAO). Poindexter's qualifications as head of the IAO have been widely questioned on grounds of personal integrity, as he was convicted on five felony counts of lying to Congress and destroying and altering evidence related to the Iran-Contra Affair.

Others emphasize the perceived stupidity of the leaders of the War on Terrrorism, especially George W. Bush.  These critics point to Bush's dichotomies (e.g. good versus evil, with us or against us) as simplistic, and often criticize Bush for his verbal miscues.

The opposition movement in many majority-Muslim countries started earlier than in most Western countries.  In Pakistan, there was immediate opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan, especially in the border regions near Afghanistan, where there are strong ties to the Pashto population in Afghanistan.  When Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf chose to ally himself with the U.S. campaign, many Islamist parties organized protests.  In October, 2002, these parties made large gains in elections.  In January, 2003, they organized nation-wide protests against the potential U.S. invasion of Iraq, largely in solidarity with their co-religionists.

Some point to a documentary by CBS - Hitler: The Rise of Evil - about how Hitler came to power. Later, the producer was fired because of remarks he made about how closely Hitler's coming to power resembles the current situation.

The program has acquired pejorative nicknames: "War on Terra", alluding to Bush's mispronunciations and PNAC's explicit written advocacy of US supremacy over Earth, aka Terra. British and Australian persons tend to call it "TWAT" (using "Against" instead of "On"). The Iraq component was called "Whack Iraq" (a forecast of pitting the world's mightiest military against one of its smallest) or "OIL" ("Operation Iraqi Liberation", petroleum being the suspected true motive under all the liberation "sales pitch").

And some—Lt. Gen. William Boykin among themclass="external">[1—think it's actually a new mediæval-type Crusade.

See also: Current events, list of terrorist incidents


External links

General War on Terrorism news:
Specific articles:
Critical Links:


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War, West Virginia
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
War is a city located in McDowell County, West Virginia.  As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 788.

Geography

War is located at 37°18'4" North, 81°41'3" West (37.301140, -81.684031)1.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.4 km² (0.9 mi²).  2.4 km² (0.9 mi²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there are 788 people, 331 households, and 225 families residing in the city.  The population density is 334.3/km² (870.6/mi²).  There are 388 housing units at an average density of 164.6/km² (428.7/mi²).  The racial makeup of the city is 94.67% White, 4.57% African American, 0.25% Native American, 0.00% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.38% from other races, and 0.13% from two or more races.  0.63% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There are 331 households out of which 28.7% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.5% are married couples living together, 14.8% have a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% are non-families. 29.3% of all households are made up of individuals and 13.0% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older.  The average household size is 2.38 and the average family size is 2.93.
In the city the population is spread out with 24.5% under the age of 18, 5.5% from 18 to 24, 26.1% from 25 to 44, 27.7% from 45 to 64, and 16.2% who are 65 years of age or older.  The median age is 41 years.  For every 100 females there are 86.7 males.  For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 83.1 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $16,012, and the median income for a family is $20,521. Males have a median income of $32,500 versus $18,438 for females. The per capita income for the city is $9,285.  43.3% of the population and 34.8% of families are below the poverty line.  Out of the total people living in poverty, 66.5% are under the age of 18 and 15.1% are 65 or older.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "War, West Virginia."
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Wargaming
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Wargaming (conflict simulation, consim gaming) is a hobby in which one or more players simulate battles or entire wars.

Wargaming is also used to mean the model or computer simulation of possible scenarios in military planning, also called warfare simulation. See also defense contractors.

Wargaming can also refer to the full-scale rehearsal of military maneuvers as practice for warfare. 
In this case, the two sides in the simulated battle are typically called "blue" and "orange", to avoid naming a particular adversary.

History of wargaming

Modern wargaming grew out of the military need to study warfare and to 'reenact' old battles for learning purposes. The stunning Prussian victory over the French in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) is sometimes partly credited to the training of Prussian officers with the Kriegspiel.

The first specific non military wargame club was started in Oxford, England in the 19th century.

H.G. Wells' book Little Wars was an attempt to codify rules for fighting battles with toy soldiers (miniatures), and make them available to the general public.

Wargames have existed for centuries—chess is an ancient example.  
In fact, one could make a case that all competitive zero-sum games may be considered wargames.

Wargames, like all games, exist in a range of complexities:  
some are fundamentally simple (so-called "beer-and-pretzel" games), while others (generally in an attempt to increase the 'realism' of the situation) produce rule sets that may encompass a large variety of actions (so-called "monster" games).  

One of the main difficulties with wargaming is the level of complexity of rules and record keeping.  
Extremely detailed wargame rule sets (some of which require hundreds of pages of small print and intensive recordkeeping) generally result in a slow (and for many, less enjoyable) game.  Simple rule sets, on the other hand, may not cover events that historically took place in a conflict, forcing the players to invent "house rules" to resolve disputes.


Board wargaming

A typical non-computerized wargame (Kriegspiel) consists of the following components:
Board wargames typically use cardboard counters to represent the units, and a printed mapboard as the playing surface.  
Miniatures games typically use miniature plastic or metal models for the units and model scenery placed on a tabletop or floor as a playing surface.  
Games with miniatures are often called Table-top games.
Computer wargames may take either approach and display the units and scenery on the monitor screen.


Computerized wargaming

Computerized wargames have several distinct advantages over paper and pencil wargames:
Disadvantages of computerized wargames:
Traditional wargaming differs from so-called real-time strategy computer games in that traditional wargames are generally turn-based (an obvious exception being 'in-the-field' wargaming by military organizations). 
Traditional wargames focus on the ability to analyze in-depth, plan to achieve a goal, and adjust plans to changing circumstances. Real-time strategy games (which might better be called vastly-speeded-up-time strategy games) focus more on reflexes, coordination, and the ability to make snap decisions with limited information. 
Also, real-time strategy games require less sophisticated artificial intelligence on the part of computer players.

Computer wargames are often played against human opponents via e-mail (by exchanging save-game files) to provide the human interaction and a more interesting opponent than that of the program.  
This has the disadvantage of taking much longer to finish the game, depending upon how often the players check their e-mail.  It is still much quicker (and easier) than the older method of playing board wargames by postal mail. 
A faster alternative (not available with all games) is playing over a direct connection, either LAN, modem or Internet.


Types of military wargaming

Usually, military wargaming can be broken down based on what technology is available to the 'armies' involved, what military era or war the 'army' is from, and the scale of the conflict.

All periods of history have their wargaming enthusiasts.  Games are generally by these periods:

Scales:


Notable Wargamers


Publishers of wargames



Wargames and Wargaming as computer terms

Another common use of the term "Wargame" is among the Hacker community (specifically White-hats), referring to a server that is set up specifically for the purpose of being hacked into. 
This allows the hacker to have a server to hack into, without the need to worry about the legal issues, as the owner is knowingly allowing this to happen.


External Links


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World War I
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)










simple:World War I


World War I or the First World War, 1914 - 1918, was the first war that involved nations spanning more than half the globe, hence world war.

It was commonly called The Great War or sometimes "the war to end wars" until World War II started, although the name "First World War" was coined as early as 1920 by Lt-Col à Court Repington in The First World War 1914-18.

Some scholars write of the First World War as merely the first phase of a 30-year-long war spanning the period 1914 - 1945.






Haut-Rhin, France 1917





Diplomatic origins

Though triggered by the assassination (June 28, 1914) of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia at the hands of a pro-Serbian nationalist assassin (a Bosnian Serb student named Gavrilo Princip), the war's origins lie in the complex relations of the European powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had brought not only the establishment of a powerful and dynamic German Empire , but also a legacy of animosity between France and Germany following the latter's annexation of the formerly French territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Under the political direction of her first Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, Germany secured her new position in Europe by an alliance with Austria-Hungary and a diplomatic understanding with Russia. 

The accession (1888) of Emperor Wilhelm II brought to the German throne a young ruler determined to direct policy himself, despite his rash diplomatic judgment. After the 1890 elections, in which the centre and left parties made major gains, and due in part to his disaffection at inheriting the Chancellor who had guided his grandfather for most of his career, Wilhelm engineered Bismarck's resignation. 

Much of the fallen Chancellor's work was undone in the following decades, as Wilhelm failed to renew the arrangement with Russia, presenting republican France with the opportunity to conclude (1891-94) a full alliance with the Russian Empire. Worse was to follow, as Wilhelm undertook (1897-1900) the creation of a German navy capable of threatening Britain's century-old naval mastery, prompting the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904 and its expansion (1907) to include Russia. 

Rivalry among the powers was exacerbated from the 1880s by the scramble for colonies which brought much of Africa and Asia under European rule in the following quarter-century. Even the once hesitantly imperialistic Bismarck became an advocate of overseas Empire, adding to Anglo-German tension as German acquisitions in Africa and the Pacific threatened to impinge upon British strategic and commercial interests. Wilhelm's support for Moroccan independence from France, Britain's new strategic partner, provoked the Tangier Crisis of 1905. During the Second Moroccan or Agadir Crisis (1911), a German naval presence in Morocco tested the Anglo-French coalition once again. 

A key ingredient in the emerging diplomatic powder-keg was the growth of powerful nationalist aspirations among the Balkan states, which each looked to Germany, Austria-Hungary or Russia for support. The rise of anti-Austrian circles in Serbia following a 1903 palace coup contributed to a further crisis in 1908 over Austria's unilateral annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, German pressure forcing a humiliating climbdown on the part of a Russia weakened (1905) by defeat at the hands of Japan and subsequent revolutionary disorder 

Alarm at Russia's unexpectedly rapid recovery after 1909 fuelled feeling among German ruling circles in favour of a pre-emptive war to break alleged Entente "encirclement" before Russian rearmament could tip the strategic balance decisively against Germany and Austria-Hungary. By 1913 both France and Germany were planning to extend military service, while Britain had entered into a naval convention and military discussions with France during the previous year. 


The outbreak

Austrian regional security concerns grew with the near-doubling of neighbouring Serbia's territory as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Many in the Austrian leadership, not least Emperor Franz Joseph, and Conrad von Hötzendorf, worried about Serbian nationalist agitation in the southern provinces of the Empire; they were still haunted by the memories of the Piedmontese inspired campaigns against the Austrian Italian provinces in 1859. Just as France had backed Piedmont in the campaign  culminating in the Battle of Solferino, they worried that Russia would back Serbia to annex Slavic areas of Austria. The feeling was that it was better to destroy Serbia before they were given the opportunity to launch a campaign.

Some members of the Austrian government also felt that a campaign in Serbia would be the perfect remedy to the internal political problems of the Empire. Many of them were frustrated by the power of the Hungarian government in the Empire. In 1914 the government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a "dualistic" structure. Austria and Hungary had essentially seperate governments under one monarch. The Austrian government retained control over foreign policy, but was still dependent on the Hungarians for such things as budgetary approval. Often the Hungarian leadership, under István Tisza refused Austrian requests for things such as increased military spending. In hopes of ending the political grid-lock that this caused, many hoped to form a federation, or at least trialistic monarchy. The solution was seen in increasing the numbers of Slavs in the Empire.

Franz Ferdinand's assassination in June 1914 provided the opportunity sought by some Austrian leaders for a reckoning with the smaller Slav kingdom. The Sarajevo conspirators were alleged by the Austro-Hungarian authorities to have been armed by the shadowy Black Hand, a pan-Serb nationalist grouping with links to Serbian ruling circles. 

With German backing, Austria-Hungary, acting primarily under the influence of Foreign Affairs Minister Leopold von Berchtold, sent an effectively unfulfillable 15-point ultimatum to Serbia (July 23, 1914), to be accepted within 48 hours. The Serbian government agreed to all but one of the demands. Austria-Hungary nonetheless broke off diplomatic relations (July 25) and declared war (July 28) through a telegram sent to the Serbian government. 

The Russian government, which had pledged in 1909 to uphold Serbian independence in return for Serbia's acceptance of the Bosnia annexation, mobilized its military reserves on July 30 following a breakdown in crucial telegram communications between Wilhelm and Nicholas II, who was under pressure by his military staff to prepare for war. Germany demanded (July 31) that Russia stand down her forces, but the Russian government persisted, as demobilization would have made it impossible to re-activate its military schedule in the short term. Germany declared war against Russia on (August 1) and, two days later, against the latter's ally France. 

The outbreak of the conflict is often attributed to the alliances established over the previous decades - Germany-Austria-Italy vs. France-Russia; Britain and Serbia being aligned with the latter. In fact none of the alliances was activated in the initial outbreak, though Russian general mobilization and Germany's declaration of war against France were motivated by fear of the opposing alliance being brought into play. 

Britain's declaration of war against Germany (August 4) was officially the result not of her understandings with France and Russia (Britain was technically allied to neither power), but of Germany's invasion of Belgium, whose independence Britain had guaranteed to uphold (1839), and which stood astride the planned German route for invasion of Russia's ally France.


The first battles
 

Germany's plan (named the Schlieffen plan) to deal with the Franco-Russian alliance involved delivering a knock-out blow to the French and then turning to deal with the more slowly mobilized Russian army. Rather than attack France directly, it was deemed prudent to attack France from the north. To do so, the German army had to march through Belgium. Germany demanded this free passage from the Belgian government, promising that Belgium would be Germany's firm ally if this was agreed to. When Belgium refused, Germany invaded and began marching through Belgium anyway, after first invading and securing tiny Luxembourg. It soon encountered resistance before the forts of the Belgian city of Liège. Britain sent an army to France, which advanced into Belgium. 

The delays brought about by the resistance of the Belgians, French and British forces and the unexpectedly rapid mobilization of the Russians upset the German plans. Russia attacked in East Prussia, diverting German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia at the Battle of Tannenburg, but this diversion allowed French and British forces to finally halt the German advance on Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (September 1914) as the Central Powers (the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires) were forced into fighting a war on two fronts.


The spread of war


1914:


1915:


1916


1917:


Entry of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in October - November 1914, threatening Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India and the East via the Suez canal. British action opened another front in the South with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamia campaigns, though initially the Turks were successful in repelling enemy incursion. But in Mesopotamia, after the disastrous Siege of Kut (1915-16), the British reorganized and captured Baghdad in March 1917. Further to the west in Palestine, initial British failures were overcome with Jerusalem being captured in December 1917 and the Egyptian Expeditionary Force under Edmund Allenby going on to break the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo (September 1918).


Italian Participation

Italy, since 1882 notionally allied to the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires but with her own designs against Austrian territory in South Tyrol, Istria and Dalmatia, and a secret 1902 understanding with France effectively nullifying her alliance commitments, joined the Allies in May 1915, declaring war against Germany fifteen months later. Italian action along the Austrian border pinned down large numbers of enemy troops, though the crushing German-Austrian victory of Caporetto (October 1917) temporarily eliminated Italy as a major threat. 


The Fall of Serbia

After repulsing three Austrian invasions in August-December 1914, Serbia fell to combined German, Austrian and Bulgarian invasion in October 1915. Serbian troops continued to hold out in Albania and Greece, where a Franco-British force had landed to offer assistance and to pressure the Greek government into war against the Central Powers. 


Early stages: from romanticism to the trenches


Louvain, Belgium, 1915
The perception of war in 1914 was almost romantic, and its declaration was met with great enthusiasm by many people. The common view was that it would be a short war of manoeuvre with a few sharp actions (to "teach the enemy a lesson") and would end with a victorious entry into the capital (the enemy capital, naturally) then home for a victory parade or two and back to "normal" life. There were some pessimists (like Lord Kitchener) who predicted the war would be a long haul, but "everyone knew" the War would be "Over by Christmas...."

Recruitment to the British army during WW I


The Trenching Begins

After their initial success on the Marne, Entente and German forces began a series of outflanking manoeuvres to try to force the other to retreat, in the so-called Race to the Sea. France and Britain soon found themselves facing entrenched German positions from Lorraine to Belgium's Flemish coast. The sides took set positions, the French and British seeking to take the offensive while the Germans sought to defend the territories they had occupied. One consequence of this was that the German trenches were much better constructed than those of their enemy: the Anglo-French trenches were only intended to be 'temporary' before their forces broke through the German defences. Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next four years, though protracted German action at Verdun (1916) and Allied failure the following spring brought the French army to the brink of collapse as mass desertions undermined the front line.

In the trenches

Around 800,000 soldiers from Britain and the Empire were on the Western Front at any one time, 1,000 battalions each occupying a sector of the line from Belgium to the Arne and operating a month-long four stage system, unless an offensive was underway. The front contained over 6,000 miles of trenches. Each battalion held its sector for around a week before moving back to support lines and then the reserve lines before a week out-of-line, often in the Poperinge or Amiens areas.


The Somme and Passchendaele

Both the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Passchendaele (1917) also on the Western Front resulted in enormous loss of life on both sides but minimal progress in the war. It is interesting to note that, when the British attacked on the first day of the battle of the Somme, and lost massive amounts of men to a continuous hail of machine-gun fire, they did succeed in gaining some ground. This caused the German command to order its soldiers to re-take this ground, which resulted in similar losses for the Germans. Hence, instead of a lopsided engagement, with only British soldiers attacking, which would have resulted in large amounts of casualties only for the British, the volume of attacks was rather evenly distributed, which caused even distribution of the casualties.


Poison Gas

Not even an initially devastating array of new weapons achieved the required victory: poison gas (first used by the Germans on Russian soldiers without much success in battle of Bolimow on January 1, 1915; more often quoted as first use is the attack on Canadian soldiers at Ypres on April 22, 1915); liquid fire, introduced by the Germans at Hooge on July 30, 1915); and armoured tanks (first used by the British on the Somme on September 15, 1916) each produced initial panic among the enemy, but failed to deliver a lasting breakthrough.

Use of poison gas in World War I


Aircraft and U-Boats







Nieuport Fighter Aisne, France 1917




Military aviation achieved rapid progress, from the development of (initially primitive) forward-firing aerial machine-guns by the German air force in the autumn of 1915 to the deployment of bombers against London (July 1917): more dramatic still, at least for Britain, was the use of German submarines (U-boats, from the German Unterseeboote) against Allied merchant shipping in proscribed waters from February 1915. Germany's decision to lift restrictions on submarine activity (February 1, 1917) was instrumental in bringing the United States into the war on the side of the Allies (April 6). The sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania was a particularly controversial "kill" for the U-boats.


The Eastern Front and Russia

While the Western Front had reached stalemate in the trenches, the war continued to the east.


German Victories in the East

The Russian initial plans for war had called for simultaneous invasions of Austrian Galicia and German East Prussia. Although Russia's initial advance into Galicia was largely successful, they were driven back from East Prussia by the victories of the German generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September 1914. Russia's less-developed economic and military organisation soon proved unequal to the combined might of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. In the spring of 1915 the Russians were driven back in Galicia, and in May the Central Powers achieved a remarkable breakthrough on Poland's southern fringes, capturing Warsaw on August 5 and forcing the Russians to withdraw from all of Poland.


Russia unsettled

Dissatisfaction with the Russian government's conduct of the war grew despite the success of the June 1916 Brusilov offensive in eastern Galicia against the Austrians, when Russian success was undermined by the reluctance of other generals to commit their forces in support of the victorious sector commander. Allied fortunes revived only temporarily with Romania's entry into the war on August 27: German forces came to the aid of embattled Austrian units in Transylvania, and Bucharest fell to the Central Powers on December 6. Meanwhile, internal unrest grew in Russia, as the Tsar remained out of touch at the front, while the Empress's increasingly incompetent rule drew protests from all segments of Russian political life, resulting in the murder of Alexandra's favourite Rasputin by conservative noblemen at the end of 1916.


The Russian Revolution

In March 1917, demonstrations in St. Petersburg culminated in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the appointment of a weak centrist provisional government, which shared power with the socialists of the Petrograd Soviet. This division of power led to confusion and chaos, both on the front and at home, and the army became progressively less able to effectively resist the Germans. Meanwhile, the war, and the government, became more and more unpopular, and the discontent was strategically used by the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, in order to gain power. 

The triumph of the Bolsheviks in November was followed in December by an armistice and negotiations with the Germans. At first, the Bolsheviks refused to agree to the harsh German terms, but when the Germans resumed the war and marched with impunity across the Ukraine, the new government acceded to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, which took Russia out of the war and ceded vast territories including Finland, the Baltic provinces, Poland and the Ukraine to the Central Powers.


Turning of the tide

1917 finally saw the entry of the United States into the war. And with Russia's defeat on the Eastern Front, the Germans were free to deliver troops to the west. With both German reinforcements and new American troops pouring into the Western Front, the final outcome of the war was to be decided in that front.


Entry of the United States


Early in 1917 Germany resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. This, combined with public indignation over the Zimmerman Telegram, led to a final break of relations with the Central Powers. President Woodrow Wilson requested that the United States Congress declare war, which it did on April 6, 1917. (Only one member of Congress, Jeanette Rankin of Montana, voted against the war). 

The United States Army and the National Guard had mobilized in 1916 to pursue the Mexican "bandit" Pancho Villa, which helped speed up the mobilization. The United States Navy was able to send a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, and a number of destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland, to help guard convoys. However, it would be some time before the United States forces would be able to contribute significant manpower to the Western and Italian fronts.

The British and French insisted that the United States emphasize sending infantry to reinforce the line. Throughout the war, the American forces were short of their own artillery, aviation, and engineering units. However, General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Force commander, resisted breaking up American units and using them as reinforcements for British and French units, as suggested by the Allies.


German Offensive of 1918

The entry of the U.S. into the war the previous year had made the eventual arrival of U.S. troops certain, while Russia's withdrawal and the Italian disaster at Caporetto allowed the transfer of German troops to the West. Four successive German offensives followed, that of May 27 yielding gains before Paris comparable to the first advance. 

On March 21 1918 Germany launched a major offensive, "Operation Michael", against British and Commonwealth forces. The German army developed new tactics involving stormtroopers, infantry trained in Hutier tactics (after Oskar von Hutier) to infiltrate and take trenches. 

The Allies reacted by appointing French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch to coordinate all Allied activity in France, and then as generalissimo of all Allied forces everywhere.

The German offensive moved forward 60 km and pressed the British lines so much that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) commander, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, issued a General Order on April 11 stating "With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end." However, by then, the German offensive had stalled because of logistical problems. Counterattacks by Canadian and ANZAC forces pushed the Germans back.


Allied victory

The American Expeditionary Force, under General John Pershing, entered the battle lines in significant numbers in April 1918. At the Battle of Belleau Wood, from June 1 to June 30, 1918, the Second Division, including the United States Marine Corps, helped clear out the German offensive threatening Paris. 

On July 18, 1918, at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry, French and American forces went on the offensive.

The British Army, using a large number of tanks, attacked at Amiens on August 8 causing such surprise and confusion that German commander-in-chief, General Ludendorff, said it was "the blackest day of the German army."

On September 12 the First United States Army, which had recently been organized from the American Expeditionary Force, eliminated the Saint-Mihiel salient, which the Germans had occupied since 1914. This salient threatened the Paris-Nancy railroad line. American forces were short of artillery support, which was provided by the French and British. This also was the first use of the U.S. Tank Corps, led by Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton. Four days later, the salient was cleared out. 

On September 26 American forces began the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which continued until the end of the war. A key German observation post on Hill 305 in Montfaucon d'Argonne was captured on September 27. Approximately 18,000 Americans fell during this offensive. This was the first offensive conducted by the United States as an independent army. General Pershing's general thrust was the Rhine River, which he expected to breach early in 1919.

On October 24 the Italian Army, with very limited American assistance, began the Vittorio Veneto offensive against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which lasted until November 4.


End of the War

Bulgaria was the first of the Central Powers to sign an armistice (September 29, 1918, followed by Turkey (October 30) 
Germany requested a cease-fire on October 3, 1918, followed by Austria-Hungary. The fighting ended with an armistice agreed on November 11 at Compiègne. Austria and Hungary had signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy. 

When Wilhelm II. ordered the German High Seas Fleet to sortie against the Allied navies, they mutinied in Wilhelmshaven starting October 29, 1918. On November 9, a German Republic was proclaimed, marking the end of the 1871 German Empire. The Kaiser fled the next day the Netherlands, which granted him political asylum. See Weimar Republic for details.


Allied Soldiers Killed:


Central Powers Soldiers Killed:


Civilians Killed:


Distinguishing features of the War

The First World War was different from prior military conflicts: it was a meeting of 20th century technology with 19th century mentality and tactics. This time, millions of soldiers fought on all sides and the casualties were enormous, mostly because of the more efficient weapons (like artillery and machine guns) that were used in large quantities against old tactics. Although the First World War led to the development of air forces, tanks, and new tactics (like the Rolling barrage and Crossfire), much of the action took place in the trenches, where thousands died for each square metre of land gained. The First World War also saw the use of chemical warfare, and aerial bombardment, both of which had been outlawed under the 1909 Hague Convention. The effects of gas warfare were to prove long-lasting, both on the bodies of its victims (many of whom, having survived the war, continued to suffer in later life) and on the minds of a later generation of war leaders (Second World War) who, having seen the effects of gas warfare in the Great War, were reluctant to use it for fear that the enemy would retaliate and might have better weaponry. 


Weaponry

Notable infantry weaponry of World War 1 included the Maxim machine gun. British forces used the Lewis gun and Webley. American forces used the Browning Automatic Rifle and M1911. German forces used the Karabiner 98k and Luger. French forces used the Chauchat.


A deadly war

Many of the deadliest battles in history occurred in this war. See Ypres, Vimy Ridge, Marne, Cambrai, Somme, Verdun, Gallipoli. See Wars of the 20th Century for various totals given for the number that died in this war. For instance, is it proper to consider the Influenza pandemic (see below) as part of the overall death count for the war, given the important part the War played in its transmission?


Aftermath

See Aftermath of World War I, Paris Peace Conference of 1919


Revolutions

Perhaps the single most important event precipitated by the privations of the war was the Russian Revolution. Socialist and explicitly Communist uprisings also occurred in many other European countries from 1917 onwards, notably in Germany and Hungary. 

As a result of the Bolsheviks' failure to cede territory, German and Austrian forces defeated the Russian armies, and the new communist government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. In that treaty, Russia renounced all claims to Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (specifically, the formerly Russian-controlled Congress Poland of 1815) and Ukraine, and it was left to Germany and Austria-Hungary "to determine the future status of these territories in agreement with their population."


Influenza pandemic

A separate, but related event was the great influenza pandemic. A new strain of Influenza, originating in the U.S.A (but misleadingly known as "Spanish Flu") was accidentally carried to Europe with the American forces. The disease spread rapidly through the both the continental U.S. and Europe, reaching, eventually, around the globe. The exact number of deaths is unknown, but in excess of 20 million people worldwide is not considered an overestimate. See also: Spanish Flu

Social trauma: The experiences of the war lead to a sort of collective national trauma afterwards for all the participating countries. The optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought in the war became what is known as "the Lost Generation" because they never fully recovered from their experiences. This was especially acute in France where a huge number of their young men were killed or injured during the conflict. For the next few years the nation became obsessive in its mourning and thousands of memorials were erected, one for each village in France. 


Geopolitical consequences

Nearly 15 percent of the land area of the German Empire was ceded at Allied insistence to various countries. The largest confiscated part of Germany was restored toPoland, that claimed most of areas of Poland before partitions 1772-1795. Those provinces were in 1871 incorporated into Germany; the part of it was sometimes referred as  the "Polish Corridor" because of its position between East Prussia and the rest of Germany. Poland also tried successfully to restore former Polish provinces from Russia. Britain and France occupied the vast majority of former German and Ottoman colonies as "League of Nations mandates". 

Russia also lost all non-Russian provinces. They were transferred to separate Soviet Republic, Ukraine, Transakaukazia, Central Asia. The countries of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were created to accommodate ethnic groups. Also, land was taken for addition to Poland, and Romania.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken into many pieces. The new republics of Austria and Hungary were established, disavowing any continuity with the empire. Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia formed the new Czechoslovakia. Galicia was transferred to Poland and South Tyrol and Trieste went to Italy. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina were joined with Serbia and Montenegro to form the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. Transylvania became part of Romania.

Because of the intermixed population and partly because of the interests of great powers, the new borders did not always follow ethnic divisions. The new states of eastern Europe nearly all had large national minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Germans continued to live in the newly created countries. A quarter of ethnic Hungarians found themselves living outside of Hungary.

Less concrete changes include the growing assertiveness of Commonwealth nations. Battles such as Gallipoli for Australia and New Zealand, and Vimy Ridge for Canada led to increased national pride and a greater reluctance to remain subordinate to Britain, leading to the growth of diplomatic autonomy in the 1920s.

Also extremely important was the participation of French colonial troops from Indochina, North Africa, and Madagascar without whom France might well have fallen. When these soldiers returned to their homelands and continued to be treated as second class citizens, many became the nucleus of pro-independence groups.


Memorials:

Many towns in the participating countries have a war memorial dedicated to local residents who lost their lives.


Remains of ammunition

Throughout the areas where trenches and fighting lines were located, such as the Champagne region of France, quantities of unexploded shells and other ammunition have remained, some of which remains dangerous and continues to cause injuries and occasional fatalities into the 21st century. Some are still found nowadays, for instance by farmers plowing their fields. Some of this ammunition contains chemical toxic products such as mustard gas. Cleanup of major battlefields is a continuing task with no end in sight for decades more. Squads remove, defuse or destroy hundreds of tonnes of unexploded ammunition every year in France.



Tombs of the Unknown Soldier:




Resources

For more details on the subject, consult these histories:

(list of histories here)

The first major television documentary on the history of the war was the BBC's The Great War (1964), made in association with CBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Imperial War Museum. The series consists of 26 forty-minute episodes featuring extensive use of archive footage gathered from around the world and eyewitness interviews. Although some of the programme's conclusions have been disputed by historians it still makes compelling and often moving viewing.

See also:

External links


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World War II
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
simple:World War II  

World War II (in Russia and other parts of the former USSR also known as The Great Patriotic War (for the war after June 1941) and The War Against Aggression) was fought chiefly between the Allies and the Axis Powers. Most of the fighting occurred in the European theatre in and around Europe, and in the Asian theatre in the Pacific and East Asia. 

The war in Europe began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. However, Japan had invaded China already in 1937 the (Second Sino-Japanese War), which sometimes is considered the start of the Second World War (Withdrawal of the Japanese after their defeat also catalysed the Chinese Communist Revolution.)  Nazi Germany surrendered on May 7, 23:50 PM 1945, ending the war in Europe. The war in the Pacific ended on September 2, 1945, when Japan surrendered.  

It was the largest armed conflict in history, spanning virtually the entire world and involving more countries than any other war, introducing powerful new weapons, and culminating in the first use of nuclear weapons. However, despite the name, not all countries of the world were involved; some through maintained neutrality (such as Éire, Sweden and Switzerland), others through strategic insignificance (as Mexico).  However, whilst not all countries were involved, it is clear that the Second World War has had a lasting effect in shaping the political climate of the world as we know it today.

The war ravaged civilians more severely than any previous conflict (bringing to its first fruition the concept of total war) and served as a backdrop for genocidal killings by Nazi Germany as well as several other significant mass slaughters of civilians. 

These included the massacre of millions of Chinese and Korean nationals by Japan, internal mass killings in the Soviet Union, and the bombing of civilian targets in German and Japanese cities by the Allies, and bombing of European cities by Nazi Germany.  In total, World War II produced about 50 million deaths (about 2% of the population of the world), more than any other war to date (see the List of World War II casualties by country).


Preliminaries

Resentment of Germany's treatment in the aftermath of World War I and economic difficulties allowed Adolf Hitler's extreme nationalist Nazi party to come to power in Germany, and he assumed emergency power and virtual total control of the country. Defying post-World War I treaties he redeveloped the German military. He remilitarized the border zone next to France, enforced the unification of Germany with Austria, and annexed parts of Czechoslovakia. 

At the same time Benito Mussolini and the Fascist party rose to power in Italy, and formed the Axis with Germany. 

Germany entered into a treaty with the Soviet Union, and in 1939 laid claim to parts of Poland. Poland refused the claim, and Britain and France declared support for Poland. Germany then invaded Poland, and on 3rd September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany.

This needs something on the pre-war Japanese situation

See Preceding events of the European Theatre of World War II


European Theatre

See: European Theatre of World War II  and The end of World War II in Europe

In May of 1940 Germany attacked the Low Countries and then France. Their Blitzkrieg tactics succeeded in defeating the French and British armies in France. The British army evacuated from Dunkirk leaving their heavy equipment behind, and the French government made a peace, which left Germany in control of the North and the Vichy French government in charge of the South.

Germany was unable to defeat the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain and gain the air superiority needed to invade Britain. Instead they began a strategic bombing campaign which the British called the Blitz, and to blockade Britain into submission in the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain failed to succumb to either.

The Italian army attacked the British in Egypt but were driven back until Rommel's Afrika Korps reinforced them. Seesaw battles across the North African desert with the British Eighth Army came to an end with the British victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein. After America joined the war in December 1941, Allied troops landed in Vichy controlled West Africa, linked up with the Eighth Army and succeeded in driving the Axis from the continent. 

In June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union, with whom they had a non-agression pact, in Operation Barbarossa. The Russians were caught largely by surprise and Germany conquered vast areas of territory. Tenacious, almost suicidal defense prevented Germany from capturing Moscow by the time winter set in. Germany had expected the campaign to be over in a few months, and had not equipped their armies for winter fighting. In a series of massive battles the tide was turned by 1943 and Germany were on the defensive in Russia.

In 1943, using North Africa as a springboard, the Allies invaded Italy, which Churchill described as "the soft underbelly of Europe". Italy surrendered, but German troops moved to disarm the Italians and set about defending the country on their own. They established a series of tough defensive lines in country that was ideally suited to defense, and progress by the Allies was slow.

The Allies invaded Northern France in Operation Overlord in June 1944 and liberated most of France and the Low Countries by the end of the year. After a desperate counteroffensive by Germany in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, the Allies entered Germany in 1945. By now the Soviets had reached the Eastern borders of Germany, and her fate was sealed. Following Hitler's suicide as the Russians entered Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally in May 1945.


Asian Theatre

Main Article: Asian theatre of World War II

The Japanese had already invaded China before World War II started in Europe. With the United States and other countries cutting exports to Japan, Japan decided to bomb Pearl Harbor in 1941. Japanese forces occupied islands throughout the Pacific and several countries in Asia. An island-hopping offensive by the Allies recaptured the islands while fighting drove the Japanese back on  mainland Asia. After Tokyo was firebombed and nuclear bombs hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered.


African and Middle Eastern Theatre

The north African campaign began in 1940, when small British forces in Egypt turned back an Italian advance from Libya. This advance was stopped in 1941 when German forces under Erwin Rommel landed in Libya. Thus began a seesaw campaign that culminated in the two Battles of El Alamein. In addition,  In June 1941 the Australian Army and allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon, capturing Damascus on June 17.

The First Battle of El Alamein took place between July 1 and July 27, 1942. Germany had advanced to El Alamein, the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. However, as in the Soviet Union, they had outrun their supplies, and a British defence stopped their thrusts.

The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3, 1942. It saw British forces take the offensive. Rommel was pushed back, and this time did not stop falling back until Tunisia.

To complement this victory, on 8 November, 1942, American and British troops landed in Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch. The local forces of Vichy France put up limited resistance before joining the Allied cause. Ultimately German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from Algeria and Libya. Advancing from both the east and west, the Allies completely pushed Germany out of Africa and on May 13, 1943, the remnants of the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. Not widely known is that the number of prisoners taken in this incident, 250,000 was as many as at Stalingrad.


Historical significance

In contrast to World War I, the Western victors in the Second World War did not demand compensation from the defeated nations.  On the contrary, a plan created by U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the "Economic Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, called for the US Congress to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe.

Since the League of Nations had obviously failed to prevent the war, a new international order was constructed. In 1945 the United Nations was founded.

The portion of Europe occupied or dominated by the Soviet Union did not benefit from the Marshall Plan. In the Paris Peace Treaty, the Soviet Union's enemies Hungary, Finland and Romania were required to pay war reparations of $300,000,000 each (in 1938 dollars) to USSR and her satellites. Italy was required to pay $360,000,000, shared chiefly between Greece, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

In the areas occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the war, puppet communist regimes were installed, over the objections of the other Allies and the governments in exile. Germany was partitioned into two countries, with the Eastern part becoming a separate communist state. In Churchill's words, "an Iron Curtain had descended across Europe". In due course this would lead to a commitment from America to help protect Western Europe, the formation of NATO and the Cold War. 

The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had came under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths. 

The massive research and development involved in the Manhattan Project in order to quickly achieve a working nuclear weapon design greatly impacted the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States.

In the military sphere, it seems World War II marked the coming of age of airpower, mostly at the expense of warships. While the pendulum continues to swing in this never-ending competition, air powers are now a full partner in any military action.

The war was the high-water mark for mass armies. While huge armies of low-quality troops would be seen again (during the Korean War and in a number of African conflicts), after this victory the major powers relied upon small highly-trained and well-trained militaries. 

After the war, many high-ranking Nazis were prosecuted for war crimes, as well as the mass murder of the Holocaust committed mainly on the area of General Government, in the Nuremberg trials. Similarly Japanese leaders were prosecuted in the Tokyo War Crime Trial. In other countries, notably in Finland, the Allies demanded the political leadership to be prosecuted in "war-responsibility trials" - i.e. not for crimes of war.

The defeat of Japan, and her occupation by American Forces, led to a Westernisation of Japan that was surely more far-reaching than would otherwise have occurred.  Japan approximated more closely to a Western style democracy and, because of her defeat by the USA, set out to ape the United States.  This huge national effort led to the post-war Japanese economic miracle and Japan's rise to become the world's second largest economy.


Military engagements


Battles


Naval engagements


Major bombing campaigns

See also Strategic bombing survey for the overall impact of the bombing.  


Common weapons
 

Defensive lines


Political and Social Aspects of the War


Production and logistics
 

The Allies won, and the Axis lost, at least partly because the Allies had greater productive resources, and were able to turn these resources into greater numbers of soldiers and weapons than the Axis. 


Related articles


Lists


External links


References


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Abbreviations & Acronyms: War
The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted.
EntrySourceExpressionField
WAR
EnglishWatertown Arsenal ReactorN/A
War.EnglishWarwickshireN/A
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).
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Synonyms: War
Synonyms: state of war (n), warfare (n). (additional references)
Antonyms: peace (n), make peace (v). (additional references)
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Synonyms within Context: War
ContextSynonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Warfare
Noun: warfare; fighting;Verb: hostilities; war, arms, the sword; Mars, Bellona, grim visaged war, horrida bella; bloodshed.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.
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Crosswords: War
English words defined with "war": American Civil War, Arab-Israeli War ♦ Boer War ♦ Civil war, Crimean War ♦ English Civil War ♦ First World War, Franco-Prussian War, French and Indian War ♦ god of war, Great War ♦ Korean War ♦ limited war ♦ Mexican War ♦ Peloponnesian War, Persian Gulf War, prisoner of war, prisoner of war camp, prisoner of war censorship, Public war ♦ Russo-Japanese War ♦ Second World War, Seven Years' War, Six Day War, sloop of war, Spanish War, Spanish-American War, state of war ♦ To levy war, Trojan War ♦ Vietnam War ♦ war advocacy, war baby, War between the States, war chest, war cloud, war crime, war criminal, War cry, War dance, War field, war god, War horse, War of 1812, War of the Grand Alliance, War of the League of Augsburg, War of the Spanish Succession, War paint, War song, War to End War, war vessel, War whoop, war widow, warning of war, world war, World War I, World War II. (references)
Specialty definitions using "war": Barons' War ♦ civilian preparedness for war, Core War, Corinthian War, Crakys of War ♦ Dick Size War ♦ flame war ♦ Giants' War with Jove ♦ hostility towards a country at war or foreign troops ♦ include war, International Core War Society, IRC penis war ♦ laws of war ♦ Netherlands War Graves Association ♦ operational level of war ♦ Peninsular War, penis war, prisoner of war compound, prisoner of war enclosure ♦ rules of war ♦ Sacred War, Seven Weeks' War, Sinews of War, Six Months' War, strategic level of war, Surest Way to Peace is a constant Preparation for War. ♦ tactical level of war ♦ war and civil war exclusion clause, War Clause, War Crimes, war dialer, War of the Meal-sacks, war peril, war reserve modes, War Risk, War Risk Insurance, war,etc.. (references)
Etymologies containing "war": Werre. (references)
Non-English Usage: "War" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses.
Breton (on), Dutch (confusion, disorder), German (was), Manx (stroke ).
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Modern Usage: War
DomainUsage
Screenplays
Can I just say, to return to the subject for one moment, that it might be easier to fight a war on drugs if we weren't arming drug dealers (The American President; writing credit: Aaron Sorkin.)
Tired of this war, tired of fighting I'm tired of the ship, being cold, eating the same goddamn goop everyday (The Matrix; writing credit: Andy Wachowski; Larry Wachowski)
No more absurd than starting a war for ratings (Tomorrow Never Dies; writing credit: Bruce Feirstein)
We French lost our war in Indochina because we failed to learn about the people we sought to lead (M. Butterfly; writing credit: David Henry Hwang.)
You had a bullet from World War I in your leg, James (Twelve Monkeys; writing credit: David Webb Peoples)
Lyrics
No point of war ("War"; performing artist: Edwin Starr)
He was mighty proud when World War Three was declared, (So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III); performing artist: Tom Lehrer)
So help me I can't win this war, oh no (Shape Of My Heart; performing artist: Backstreet Boys)
Even though we are at war. (From a Distance; performing artist: Bette Midler)
Well our fathers fought the Second World War (Allentown; performing artist: Billy Joel)
Clever
War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull. (references; author: Mark Twain)
War Dims Hope for Peace (references; author: unknown)
It is not a war on drugs; it's a war on people. (references; author: unknown)
War never decides who is right, only who is left. (references; author: unknown)
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. (references; author: unknown)
Movie/TV Titles
War Games (2001)
In Love and War (2001)
Carrie's War (1974)
Judgement: An Essay on War (1974)
Love Not War (1974)
Song Titles
War Is Bad (performing artist: Steven Brust)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Commercial Usage: War
DomainTitle
References
  • The 2000 Import and Export Market for Armored Fighting Vehicles, Arms of War, and Ammunitions in Latin America (reference)
  • The 2002 World Forecasts of Armored Fighting Vehicles, Arms of War, and Ammunitions Export Supplies (reference)
  • The 2003 World Market Forecasts for Imported Armored Fighting Vehicles, Arms of War, and Ammunitions (reference)
  • The World Market for Armored Fighting Vehicles, Arms of War, and Ammunitions: A 2003 Global Trade Perspective (reference)
    (more reference examples)
  
Books
  • An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism (reference)
  • The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 (reference)
  • The Last Great Victory: The End of World War Ii, July-August 1945 (reference)
  • War Maps: World War II, from September 1939 to August 1945, Air, Sea, and Land, Battle by Battle (Us) (reference)
  • The Art of War of Revolutionary France, 1789-1802 (reference)
    (more book examples)
  
Periodicals
  
Theater & Movies
  
Music
  
High Tech
  
Consumer Goods
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Image Slideshow: War
Photos:
War
More pictures...
Illustrations:
War
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Computer Images:
War
More pictures...
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Photo Album: War
ThumbnailDescription & CreditThumbnailDescription & Credit
The Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities, established in the offices of PHS, February 10, 1942, was renamed the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas, MCWA, April 27, 1942. Credit: CDC.
Poster commemorating Vietnam war veterans. Credit: CDC.
John Rodgers Served over three years with Coast Survey in early 1850's Commanded North Pacific exploring expedition Rodgers was well-known for Civil War exploits. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection.
Gilbert T. Rude During World War I as a naval officer. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection.
Tabby ruins at Chocolate on the northwest side of the island. Tabby refers to the building material which is a durable cement-like mixture of equal parts of water, sand, shell, and lime. These ruins are part of an antebellum plantation that was deserted following the Civil War. Credit: America's Coastlines.
Village of Attu on Attu Island.  Attu was one of two Aleutian islands captured  by Japanese forces during the Second World War.  A tragedy occurred here as the Weather Bureau observer and his wife attempted suicide during the Japanese invasion.  The observer succeeded but his wife survived and was incarcerated for the duration of the war.  F&WS B-50338. Credit: America's Coastlines.
Fort Rodman at Clarks Point. This fort existed from the Civil War through the 1960s. A wastewater treatment plant, as part of the remedial activities to clean New Bedford Harbor, was placed at the site,  after clean-up was completed, the facility was removed and a park was created. Credit: NOAA Restoration Center.
Roman Vegetius' impractical vision of a leather helmet and umbilical for war. Credit: National Undersea Research Program (NURP).
The Coast and Geodetic Survey Ship LYDONIA during World War II. Credit: Sailing for Science - the NOAA Fleet Then and Now.
The printing press used on the Coast and Geodetic Survey Ship PATHFINDER during World War II.  The PATHFINDER was staffed by C&GS hydrographers who were the first to survey AND print maps at sea during combat operations. Credit: Sailing for Science - the NOAA Fleet Then and Now.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.
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Digital Photo Gallery: War
 
"War Shots - President Bush 5" by Erich Peters
Commentary: "President Bush greets the trrops."		"Dana Lewis goes to war" by Nate Nolting
Commentary: "Screen shot off the news."

Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.
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Sounds Captioned with "War".
PlayCaption
War plane taking off from a ship.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Familiar Quotations: War
AuthorQuotation
Charles Lamb
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Christopher Marlowe
Accurst be he that first invented war.
H. G. Wells
The War That Will End War.
John F. Kerry
The war the soldiers tried to stop.
Marquis De Vauvenargues
Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.
Pierre Corneille
Peace is produced by war.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
William T. Sherman
War is cruel and you cannot refine it.
William Tecumseh Sherman
War is hell.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Historic Usage: War
AuthorDateQuotation
Magna Carta
1215
All merchants shall have safe and secure exit from England, and entry to England, with the right to tarry there and to move about as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and right customs, quit from all evil tolls, except (in time of war) such merchants as are of the land at war with us. (reference)
John Locke
1690
They made not the war, nor assisted in it. (Second Treatise of Government)
US Declaration of Independence
1776
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. (reference)
US Constitution
1791
Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. (reference)
US Bill of Rights
1795
Amendment III. No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. (reference)
Communist Manifesto
1848
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. (reference)
The Emancipation Proclamation
1862
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for supressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit:  Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued. (Abraham Lincoln)
Abraham Lincoln
1863
We are met on a great  battlefield of that war. (The Gettysburg Address)
Treaty of Versailles
1919
Damage caused by any kind of maltreatment of prisoners of war. (reference)
Winston S. Churchill
1946
I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. ("Iron Curtain" Speech)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Use in Literature: War
TitleAuthorQuote
Contact
Carl Sagan
Every government that prepares for war paints its adversaries as monsters, she said
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams
So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that thirty-five percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down
Les Miserables
Hugo, Victor
That war comprised many events in one, and no small number of singular things
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James
A little ring of listeners closed round to hear the war of wits
King Richard III
Shakespeare, William
Alarums] Either be patient and entreat me fair, Or with the clamorous report of war Thus will I drown your exclamations
Gulliver's Travels
Swift, Jonathan
He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another
Walden
Thoreau, Henry David
A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
' and let slip the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Non-Fiction Usage: War
SubjectTopicQuote
Health
In both the Vietnam War and World War II, more personnel time was lost due to malaria than to bullets. (references)
A global pandemic of dengue began in Southeast Asia after World War II and has intensified during the last 15 years. (references)
First used during World War II to detect enemy submarines below the surface of the water, ultrasound has since been used safely in obstetrics. (references)
Business
These forces participated in the recent Gulf war. (references)
The number of disabled has been growing recently due to the war in Chechnya. (references)
Unfortunately, millions of landmines in the former war zones continue to threaten human lives. (references)
Children
Angola
Children often were victims in the civil war. (references)
El Salvador
Many disabilities are directly attributable to the civil war. (references)
Liberia
Young persons were victimized seriously during the civil war. (references)
Civil Liberties
Bangladesh
Most supported Pakistan during Bangladesh's 1971 War of Independence. (references)
Papua New Guinea
Persons displaced by the civil war are free to return to their homes. (references)
Eritrea
After August 2000, forced, mass deportations stopped after the end of the war with Ethiopia. (references)
Economic History
Croatia
However, war damage was significant. (references)
Italy
Italy hosts the NATO War College in Rome. (references)
Switzerland
The Swiss did not participate in either world war. (references)
Human Rights
Sri Lanka
The LTTE uses excessive force in the war. (references)
Croatia
Courts tried and convicted in absentia persons for war crimes. (references)
Tajikistan
Both the Government and the opposition used landmines during the civil war. (references)
Indigenous People
Peru
Isolated primarily along the Ene River in Junin department, the terrorist group continued to coerce indigenous peasants into joining its ranks and to demand war taxes. (references)
Nicaragua
Like many armed groups operating since the end of the civil war, the Yatama groups combine banditry with a genuine desire to force the Government to devote more resources to their underdeveloped region. (references)
Mexico
In an April 2000 report "The War in Chiapas," CDHFBC asserted that the military was the principal aggressor in cases reported to the Center in 1999. The CDHFBC also concluded that the presence of the military put at risk the human rights to life, physical integrity, liberty, and security of the local inhabitants. (references)
Minorities
Congo
Ethnic divisions were apparent in the 1997 civil war and the 1998-99 conflict. (references)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Favoritism is also shown to veterans and families of those killed during the war. (references)
Croatia
An ongoing problem was the availability of weapons left over from the war, including firearms and explosives, which were used in incidents of harassment during the year. (references)
Political Economy
Sudan
The SPLA remains the principal military force in the war. (references)
Turkey
Turkey has been a vital U.S. ally since the beginning of the Cold War. (references)
Afghanistan
Afghanistan has experienced civil war and political instability for 22 years. (references)
Political Rights
Yugoslavia
Indicted war criminal Milan Milutinovic remained President of the Republic of Serbia. (references)
Angola
In 1999 the Government declared Savimbi a war criminal and issued a warrant for his arrest; the warrant remained outstanding at year's end. (references)
Congo
In 1998 the CNT passed a law on genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that permits the exclusion from public office of those found guilty of such crimes. (references)
Trade
Austria
The import of war materiel requires a license and individual approval of each shipment. (references)
Austria
War materiel for export or transit is subject to a license by the Austrian Ministry of the Interior. (references)
Qatar
Only one U.S. firm, involved in the Phase I development of the North Field project, bought the OPIC insurance for risk of convertibility and war. (references)
Travel
Chad
Years of civil unrest and war have destroyed residential and business structures. (references)
Taiwan
Moreover, many people, especially those educated before the Second World War, can also speak Japanese. (references)
Sri Lanka
With over 25,000 kilometers of paved road, all parts of the island--aside from the war zones in the North and East--are easily accessible. (references)
Women
Somalia
Women suffered disproportionately in the civil war and in the strife that followed. (references)
Japan
The District Court ruling had been the first court judgment rendered in favor of foreign war victims. (references)
Afghanistan
The prohibition on women working outside of the home was especially difficult for the large numbers of widows left by 20 years of civil war; there were an estimated 30,000 widows in Kabul alone. (references)
Worker Rights
Liberia
Although most economic activity was interrupted by the war, unions proliferated. (references)
Zimbabwe
Joseph Chinotimba, a prominent war veteran leader, appeared to lead the organization. (references)
Eritrea
This requirement was first imposed on university students in 1999 but suspended in 2000 because of the war. (references)
Lexicography
Devil's Dictionary
EXILE, n.  One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador. An English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of Erin," replied:  "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it."  Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply: Aug. 3d, 1842.  Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin.  Coldly received.  War with the whole world!
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.
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Spoken Usage: War
SpeakerPhrase(s)
Al Hunt
Let's talk just a moment about the war. You wrote a column in which you said in Afghanistan you can't tell who's on which side.
Dan Rather
None of them feels the country will rise up against Saddam Hussein. All of them believe that war is inevitable and will be catastrophic.
Dennis Miller
It's time to change our way of thinking and take the war on drugs out of the political hot button campaign topics.
Elizabeth Taylor
Very much so. I don't agree with his other politics. I don't want to go to war. And it just seems inevitable at the rate they're going.
Karl Lagerfeld
Several things. First, don't forget Germany after the war was not the most exciting place. I didn't even know that one could make a living in fashion.
Robert Novak
Mr. Chairman, it's generally agreed that the war in Afghanistan is a CIA show, run by the CIA with the military providing assets.
Rush Limbaugh
President Bush is now leading a worldwide war against terrorism, focused presently on bin Laden, al Qaeda, and their Taliban sponsors.
Walter Cronkite
War is hell. And arresting people, particularly if you have made a mistake and they are innocent civilians, can be pretty tough.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Speeches: War
SpeakerTermPhrase(s)
George Washington
1789-1797To be prepared for war is on e of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
Thomas Jefferson
1801-1809Yet the same practices are renewed in the present war and are already of great amount.
Abraham Lincoln
1861-1865Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained.
Harry S. Truman
1945-1953I, therefore, urge the Congress soon to extend the Second War Powers Act.
Dwight Eisenhower
1953-1961Some, impoverished by the recent World War, seek to restore their means of livelihood.
Richard Nixon
1969-1974Tonight I do not tell you that the war in Vietnam is the war to end wars.
Ronald Reagan
1981-1989Governments which rest upon the consent of the governed do not wage war on their neighbors.
George Bush
1989-1993Iraq's capacity to sustain war is being destroyed.
Bill Clinton
1993-2001But as the Cold War fades into memory, voices of isolation say America should retreat from its responsibilities.
George W. Bush
2001-2005We're fighting a new kind of war against determined enemies.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Usage Frequency: War
"War" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 99.86% of the time. "War" is used about 27,852 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words		Rank in English
Noun (singular)99.86%27,813301 
Noun (proper)0.09%2668,323 
Unclassified Items0.04%11106,044 
                    Total100.00%27,852N/A
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
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Name Usage Frequency: War
The following table summarizes the usage of "war" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified.
NameUsage/GenderUsage per 100
million Persons		Rank in USA
WarLast name13066,611
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
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Derived & Related Names: War
The following table summarizes names derived from the word "war".
 
NameGenderLanguageMeaning
LahmamN/ABiblical
Their war
LahmiN/ABiblical
My war
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
 
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Cities: War

1. War, WV (city, FIPS 84484) 
Location: 37.30277 N, 81.68008 W 
Population (1990): 1081 (525 housing units) 
Area: 2.3 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Country: USA
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Expressions: War
Expressions using "war": act of war ♦ aftermath of war ♦ aggressive war ♦ air war ♦ american civil war ♦ american War of Independence ♦ articles of war ♦ at loggerheads at war at issue ♦ at open war with ♦ at war ♦ at war with ♦ ban war ♦ bang in the middle of the war ♦ be at war with ♦ be on the war path ♦ blitz war ♦ boer war ♦ civil war ♦ civilian preparedness for war ♦ Civilian War Victims Organisation ♦ class war ♦ cloud of war ♦ cold war ♦ contraband of war ♦ conventional war ♦ core War ♦ Council of war ♦ crimean War ♦ danger of the war ♦ declaration of war ♦ declare war ♦ declare war against ♦ declared war ♦ defensive war ♦ Dick Size War ♦ dogs of war ♦ emergency in war ♦ engage in a war ♦ engage in war ♦ english Civil War ♦ first World War ♦ flame war ♦ fratricidal war ♦ french and Indian War ♦