[E-book ENG - epub-mobi-pdf] - Anthony Saunders - Trench Warfare 1850-1950

Trench Warfare 1850-1950 - Anthony Saunders

Publication Year: 2010

Language: English



Although many books have been published about the Western Front, few of them look beyond the Great War to consider trench warfare in a wider historical context. Trench warfare was not an aberration of the Western Front. On the contrary, it was a watershed in a greater upheaval in warfare which started in the 1850s and continued well beyond the First World War. This book examines how trench warfare was fought, studying the Crimea, American Civil War and Japanese War 1904-05. He looks at how the Western Front of 1914-18 differed from the trench fighting of the Second World War and the Korean War. The book examines the evolution of trench warfare, technologically and tactically, from the Crimean War to the Korean War, during which time developments in military technology often advanced far beyond tactical thinking. Trench Warfare 1850 - 1950 discusses the impact of trench warfare on military thinking and considers how the stalemate of the Western Front was overcome. Emergency technologies, from the hand grenade to the tank, are discussed to highlight their impact on trench warfare and, ultimately, on warfare as a whole. Tactically, trench warfare led to the development of the concept of deep battle which was later employed by the Red Army in the Second World War.

The author

Anthony Saunders is a military historian who focuses on the First World War. He has a PhD from the University of Exeter and a B.Tech (Hons) from Brunel University. Between 1978 and 1983, he worked as a Patent Officer in the Principal Directorate of Patents, MoD. As a historian, he has a particular interest in the relationship between technology and tactics, and in munition lethality. He is an authority on the invention, development and tactical use of British grenades and mortars in the First World War. He has a keen interest in European swords and swordsmanship.
He has six non-fiction titles to his name, including Trench Warfare 1850–1950 (Pen & Sword), Reinventing Warfare 1914–18 (Bloomsbury/Continuum) and Raiding on the Western Front (Pen & Sword). Anthony is currently working on a novel set during the First World War which will be published by Endeavour Press. He also writes eccentric fiction. So far, his genius for this has gone unrecognised and his novel, The Spectacle that is Jack Coq and his Amazing Anatomie, a tragedie in diverse Acts, has yet to appear in print.