Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq

Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq

by Louis A. DiMarco

Overview

Throughout history cities have been at the center of warfare, from sieges to street-fighting, from peace-keeping to coups de mains. Sun Tzu admonished his readers of The Art of War that the lowest realization of warfare was to attack a fortified city. Indeed, although strategists have advised against it across the millennia, armies and generals have been forced nonetheless to attack and defend cities, and victory has required that they do it well. In Concrete Hell Louis DiMarco has provided a masterful study of the brutal realities of urban warfare, of what it means to seize and hold a city literally block by block. Such a study could not be more timely. We live in an increasingly urbanizing world, a military unprepared for urban operations is unprepared for tomorrow. Di Marco masterfully studies the successes and failures of past battles in order to provide lessons for today's tacticians.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781472833389
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication date: 10/24/2017
Series: Military History
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 234
Sales rank: 743,392
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Louis DiMarco retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army in 2005 after more than 24 years of active service. His civilian education includes a Bachelor of Science Degree from the US Military Academy, a Masters in Military Art and Science from the US Army Command and Staff College, and a Masters of Arts Degree in International Relations. Currently Col. DiMarco is assigned to the faculty of the Army Command and Staff College, where he teaches military history and elective courses on the history of modern urban warfare and modern warfare in the Middle East. Col. DiMarco has authored several key Army doctrinal manuals including FM 3-06, Urban Operations (2002). Other written projects include the Army's Scout Platoon Field Manual (1994), and the first work in the Combat Studies Institute's Global War on Terror series entitled Traditions, Changes, and Challenges: Military Operations and the Middle Eastern City (2004). Col. DiMarco has written and lectured on a variety of military topics including urban warfare and counterinsurgency. His most recent work is an article entitled “Losing the Moral Compass: Torture and Guerre Revolutionanaire in the Algerian War.''

Table of Contents

Urban Warfare, Past and Future /An Operational Debacle - Stalingrad, 1942 /American Urban Warfare - Aachen, 1944 /Urban Warfare from the Sea - Inchon and Seoul, 1950 /Complex Urban Warfare - The Battle for Algiers, 1956-57 /The Long Urban War - Operation Banner, 1969-2007 /Urban Death Trap - The Russian Army in Grozny, 1995 /Invading the Urban Sanctuary - Operation Defensive Shield and the Battle for Jenin, 2002 /Systematic Urban Warfare - “Ready First” in Ramadi, 2006-07 /Urban Combat in the 21st Century /Index /About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Concrete Hell is a masterful study of the brutal realities of modern combat, tracing the development of military operations in an urban environment from the Soviet defense of Stalingrad in World War II to the recent operations of the US Army in Iraq. The author has synthesized 24 years experience in the US Army and in doing so has created a blueprint for urban warfare in the future. Such a study could not be more timely."
—Savannah Jones, www.sirreadalot.org (December 2012)

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