Twentieth-Century Warriors: The Development of the Armed Forces of the Major Military Nations in the Twentieth-Century

Carver, former chief of the defense staff in Great Britain, analyzes military dynamics in Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, China and the United States, showing how the armed forces in each country have reacted to domestic politics and external threat. This military history of our century is a forum for the author's occasionally startling opinions. He believes that the prospect of rapid victory on the part of the aggressor has been a principal cause of war; that none of the wars of this century have been inevitable; that the Soviets had the best system of command in World War II; that Lord Mountbatten's influence on Britain's armed forces was ""unrivalled.'' He calls the current Soviet military ``undoubtedly the most formidable war machine the world has ever seen.'' Of the U.S. armed forces he writes, ``The human material has been neglected in the pursuit of technology, the latest example being the Strategic Defense Initiative.'' (May)