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Cevat Paşa (General Cevat Çobanlı: 1870-1938) was an Ottoman Army officer who played a decisive role in the defence of the Dardanelles Strait against the Allied offensive during the First World War. He had been primarily responsible for the preparation and improvement of defensive plans as the commander of the Çanakkale Fortified Zone, as well as the implementation of these plans during the Allied naval assault of 19 February-18 March 1915. The ultimate failure of the offensive was mainly due to the careful planning and successful execution of defensive measures under the command of Cevat Paşa.

Operational research is a scientific discipline that appeared in Great Britain on the eve of the Second World War. Bomber Command’s Operational research section began its studies in September 1941, using civilian scientists to analyse the bombing operations. Two potentially conflicting goals were pursued, one intended to maximize the offensive power against Germany, the other striving to minimize bomber losses. This article uses the Operational research performed during the conflict to illustrate the choices made by Bomber Command between those two possibilities, concluding on a clear priority in favour of the offensive.

Imperial count of the Holy Roman Empire and sovereign ruler Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst zu Schaumburg-Lippe (1724–1777) established in his small state of Schaumburg-Lippe the prototype of the nation in arms decades before the French levée en masse. Count Wilhelm also founded an educational institution designed to educate and train both civilian and military leaders in homeland defence. He was also the first German prince to condemn aggressive, offensive war. His most famous student was Gerhard von Scharnhorst. After Prussia’s catastrophic defeat in 1806, Scharnhorst was able to lay the foundations of a modern Prussian military along the lines of Count Wilhelm’s national army. Using primary and secondary source material, this article analyses the tremendous contribution of Count Wilhelm zu Schaumburg-Lippe to modern military history.

Finland’s Winter War (1939–40) against the Soviet Union had been defensive, but the so-called Continuation War that broke out in June 1941 was not. This offensive operation in alliance with Nazi Germany demanded a thorough justification. The Lutheran clergy were important in legitimizing the war because the priests were de jure officials of the state, as well as of the church. Also, nearly 96 per cent of Finns belonged to the Lutheran Church. This article analyses how the Lutheran clergy used crusading imagery in the Continuation War, 1941–4, strategically shifting the emphasis as the war progressed.

This paper will examine decision making at GHQ during the planning for the landing of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford’s IX Corps at Suvla Bay during the MEF’s August offensive. It will show how Hamilton’s expectation that IX Corps would combine closely with ANZAC in a decisive offensive was at odds with the more discreet and limited role for IX Corps expected by his operations staff. This divergence of views at GHQ and Hamilton’s subsequent remoteness from Stopford ensured that it was his staff’s defensive interpretation that was passed on to Stopford and IX Corps.

In 1922, as civil war loomed in southern Ireland, rival factions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) conspired to support renewed violence in Northern Ireland. This joint-IRA offensive ultimately misfired, amid much recrimination, and its details have since been obscured by scarce and conflicting evidence. One of its greatest mysteries concerns the role of the Fourth Northern Division. A key player in the preparations for the offensive, it cancelled its operations on the eve of the attacks. This article explores the division’s role in the offensive and sheds new light on this controversial episode of the Irish Revolution.

This article examines Major General Charles Townshend’s offensive against Ottoman forces in Mesopotamia during the autumn of 1915. It challenges the prevailing view that the offensive was destined for failure due to the numerical superiority of Ottoman forces in the region. Examining Townshend’s role in the battle of Kut-al-Amara in late September 1915, and focusing in particular on his conduct of the battle of Ctesiphon in late November, the article argues that Townshend was confident that his 6 Indian Division could defeat the Ottomans at Ctesiphon, and he devised a feasible plan to do so. Townshend’s decisions under fire, however, undermined the success of his force and contributed to the heavy casualties that led to its withdrawal from the battlefield and its subsequent retreat to Kut-al-Amara, where the division was besieged until its surrender in April 1916.

This article exploits the previously unused private papers of the General Headquarters doctrine writers to examine the process by which the British Expeditionary Force’s combat doctrine was produced and the influences upon it. It also reveals SS.198, a hitherto unknown manual from the autumn of 1917, which illustrates Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s influence upon doctrine writing at the time of the controversial Third Ypres offensive. It concludes that the doctrinal process raises serious questions about the notion of a consistent ‘learning curve’ within the BEF.

This article continues the debate arising from Terence Zuber’s claim that the Schlieffen plan was written solely to demonstrate that the German army would be too weak for such an operation. I argue to the contrary that both variants of the Schlieffen plan are presented as workable strategies within the existing resources of the German army. The plan was based on the official deployment scheme for a one-front war, and the strong right-wing offensive through Belgium and into northern France was successfully rehearsed on the general staff ride of 1905. The article concludes by showing that the younger Moltke’s primary intentions in 1914 may also be seen as a version of the Schlieffen plan.

Russia’s summer 1916 Galician operation, the noted Brusilov offensive, was one of the most successful efforts of the First World War, resulting in the near-destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the east. However, the causes of Russian success, and particularly of Habsburg defeat, have been little studied and less understood; in particular, ethnic-based disloyalty has always been the explanation for Austro-Hungarian setbacks in mid-1916. However, this article closely examines poor Habsburg battlefield performance, and concludes that serious tactical shortcomings and inadequate leadership, rather than the vexing nationalities’ question, were the true causes of Austro-Hungarian defeat at the hands of Alexei Brusilov’s offensive.

This article continues the debate over Terence Zuber’s thesis that ‘there never was a “Schlieffen plan” ’, with particular emphasis on showing that the manpower requirements of the Schlieffen plan were consistent with the resources of the German army. It also provides further evidence for the conditional status of the march around Paris, and for Schlieffen’s view of Russia’s military incapacity in 1905. The Generalstabsreisen of 1904 are revisited in order to explain the reasons why Schlieffen was inclining towards the concept of a strong right-wing offensive, as opposed to a counter-offensive strategy. The new documentation that Zuber has adduced for the Kriegsspiel of late 1905 is analysed to demonstrate that this two-front counter-offensive exercise was not relevant to Schlieffen’s real concern at the time, which was to plan for a west-front offensive by the whole of the German army.

This article revisits the Khe Sanh siege during the Vietnam War, focusing not on the battle itself but on the North Vietnamese communist decision-making and military preparation prior to the episode. The communist sources reveal that contrary to contemporary Western reportage of the siege, Hanoi did not view Khe Sanh as another `Dien Bien Phu'. Neither was it the most important target of the 1968 Tet offensive. Rather, it was part and parcel of an overall military strategy that was finalized only in December 1967. Indeed, the North Vietnamese sources hint that the timing of the Khe Sanh operation was brought forward, which consequently affected the operation-readiness of the communist forces.