Resultados Editorial "Charles River Editors" en Guerras y conflictos

On March 8, 1862, the newest era of naval warfare began. That day the CSS Virginia, an ironclad created out of the hull of the scuttled USS Merrimac by the Confederates, sailed down the Elizabeth River to Hampton Roads, where a Union blockade fleet was anchored. The wooden ships of the North were no match for the ironclad, which quickly rammed and sank the USS Cumberland.

Among the proponents and practitioners of armored warfare, the brash, bold, arrogant, and eccentric George S. Patton remains the world's greatest armored commander by the one yardstick that really counts: the battlefield. Patton was a fascinating, complicated and controversial man whose life story ranges between genius, folly, and tragedy, with absolute determination the one constant theme.

The most famous debates in American history were held over 150 years ago, and despite their fame, no official transcripts were ever taken. Throughout the fall of 1858, US Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas participated in seven three-hour debates throughout Illinois. This unprecedented method of campaigning drew national attention, one that is still often idealized, even today, among those who feel politics is too bitterly partisan.

Despite the attempt to settle America's slavery issue with the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the young nation kept pushing further westward, and with that more territory was acquired. After the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, the sectional crisis was brewing like never before, with California and the newly-acquired Mexican territory now ready to be organized into states.

The French Army crumbled swiftly under the powerful blows delivered to it in 1940 by Nazi Germany's confident Wehrmacht. Launching a massive feint into Belgium to lure mobile French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) away from the actual point of attack, the weakly protected Ardennes Forest, the Germans struck past the Maginot Line. In a lightning campaign, Heinz Guderian's panzers punched through to the coast, dividing Allied forces with a steel cordon across France and forcing the evacuation of the BEF from the port of Dunkirk.

For much of the 20th century, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's life and career remained mostly obscure outside of dedicated scholars of the Battle of Gettysburg and alumni and students of Bowdoin College. Colonel Chamberlain had led the 20th Maine regiment at Gettysburg, holding the extreme left of the Union line on Little Round Top, and he continued to rise up the ranks toward the end of the war until he was commanding a brigade and present at the surrender ceremony of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.

In the predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, three million men waited along a front stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops. This massive gathering of Wehrmacht soldiers from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and his allied states stood poised to carry out Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack against the country of his putative ally, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

The Belgrade Offensive of 1944, while not considered one of the greatest and most important battles of the Second World War, was definitively an important moment of the war in the Balkans and marked the final defeat of the Axis in Southeastern Europe.

After Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in early 1862, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, widely considered the Confederacy's best general, concentrated his forces in northern Georgia and prepared for a major offensive that culminated with the biggest battle of the war to that point, the Battle of Shiloh. On the morning of April 6, Johnston directed an all-out attack on Grant's army around Shiloh Church, and though Grant's men had been encamped there, they had failed to create defensive fortifications or earthworks.

Before July 3, 1863, George Pickett was best known among his comrades for finishing last in his class at West Point, being a jocular but courageous soldier, and his carefully perfumed locks. As part of West Point's most famous Class of 1846, Pickett was classmates with men like Stonewall Jackson and George McClellan, and despite his poor class standing he distinguished himself fresh out of school during the Mexican-American War.

When people think about the Second World War, they seldom think in terms of silence and small acts. This was a war in which the industry of entire nations was rearranged to feed fighting, and it was fought on a scale in which battles could include hundreds of thousands of combatants. Whole cities and populations were destroyed, with millions of casualties occurring at places like Leningrad.

With Europe anticipating a potential war, all that was missing was a conflagration. That would start in 1908, when Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Balkan Peninsula, drawing it into dispute with Russia. Moreover, this upset neighboring Serbia, which was an independent nation. From 1912-1913, a conflict was fought in the Balkans between the Balkan League and the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the weakening of the Ottoman Turks. After the First Balkan War, a second was fought months later between members of the Balkan League itself.

Despite the fact that the Civil War was fought nearly 150 years ago, it remains a polarizing topic for the country to this day. And nowhere is this more evident than in the life and legacy of Confederate lieutenant general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the war's most controversial soldier.

In early June 1863, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia occupied Culpeper, Virginia, and after their victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville against armies twice their size, the Confederate troops felt invincible and anxious to carry the war north into Pennsylvania. One of the proudest was iconic cavalry leader JEB Stuart, who had filled in admirably for the mortally wounded Stonewall Jackson the previous month at Chancellorsville.

In 1860, New Orleans was just as unique a city as it is today. It was racially and linguistically diverse, with many French, German, and Spanish speakers, and a population of white, black, and mixed-race inhabitants. Louisiana's population was 47% slave and also had one of the largest numbers of free blacks in the country.

Without question, the most famous battle of the American Civil War took place outside of the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which happened to be a transportation hub, serving as the center of a wheel with several roads leading out to other Pennsylvanian towns.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren't so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism.

Alongside Robert E. Lee, no one epitomized the chivalry and heroism celebrated by the Lost Cause more than J. E. B. Stuart, the most famous cavalry officer of the Civil War. Stuart was equal parts great and grandiose while leading the cavalry for the Confederacy in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Stuart was a throwback to the past, but he was also brilliant in conducting reconnaissance, and he proved capable of leading both cavalry and infantry at battles like Chancellorsville.

It had taken about 40 years for Chicago to grow from a small settlement of about 300 people into a thriving metropolis with a population of 300,000, but in just two days in 1871, much of that progress was burned to the ground. In arguably the most famous fire in American history, a blaze in the southwestern section of Chicago began to burn out of control on the night of October 8, 1871.

The early 1930s were a tumultuous period for German politics, even in comparison to the ongoing transition to the modern era that caused various forms of chaos throughout the rest of the world. In the United States, reliance on the outdated gold standard and an absurdly parsimonious monetary policy helped bring about the Great Depression.