Colonel Allan R. Millett, USMC (ret.)
served in the United States Marine Corps, both active and reserve, for over 30 years. His “military experience included
twelve years of reserve service in infantry units, including command of an infantry battalion, for which he was awarded the
Legion of Merit in 1989.” Colonel Allan R. Millett’s academic achievements include being
the “Ambrose Professor of History at the University of New Orleans and the Maj. Gen. Raymond E. Mason Jr. Professor
Emeritus of Military History at, The Ohio State University.”
Colonel Allan R. Millett is the
author of: The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning; The General: Robert L. Bullard and Officership in the
United States Army, 1881-1925; Calculations; Drive North: U.S. Marines at the Punchbowl; A Short History of the Vietnam War;
The Reorganization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: A Critical Analysis; The American Political System and Civilian Control of
the Military a Historical; Perspective; Brassey's Mershon American Defense Annual 1996-1997: Current Issues and the Asian
Challenge; The Korean War (The Essential Bibliography Series); Semper Fidelis: A History of the United States Marine Corps;
Their War for Korea: American, Asian, and European Combatants and Civilians, 1945-1953; and, In Many a Strife: General Gerald
C. Thomas and the U.S. Marine Corps 1917-1956.
Colonel Allan R. Millett is also the
co-author of For the Common Defense; Eisenhower and Korea: The Forgotten War; Military Effectiveness: The Second
World War; Military Effectiveness, Vol. 1: The First World War; and, A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War.
Additionally, he is an editor of Commandants of the Marine Corps and Military Innovation in the Interwar
Period.
According to the book description of
The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning, “When the major powers sent troops to the Korean peninsula
in June of 1950, it supposedly marked the start of one of the last century's bloodiest conflicts. Allan
Millett, however, reveals that the Korean War actually began with partisan clashes two years earlier and had roots in the
political history of Korea under Japanese rule, 1910-1945. The first in a new two-volume history of the Korean War, Millett's
study offers the most comprehensive account of its causes and early military operations. Millett traces the war's origins
to the post-liberation conflict between two revolutionary movements, the Marxist-Leninists and the Nationalist-capitalists.
With the US-Soviet partition of Korea following World
War II, each movement, now with foreign patrons, asserted its right to govern the peninsula, leading directly to the guerrilla
warfare and terrorism in which more than 30,000 Koreans died. Millett argues that this civil strife, fought mostly in the
South, was not so much the cause of the Korean War as its actual beginning. Millett describes two revolutions locked in irreconcilable
conflict, offering an even-handed treatment of both Communists and capitalists-nationalists. Neither movement was a model
of democracy. He includes Korean, Chinese, and Russian perspectives on this era, provides the most complete account of the
formation of the South Korean army, and offers new interpretations of the U.S. occupation of Korea, 1945-1948. Millett's
history redefines the initial phase of the war in Asian terms. His book shows how both internal forces and international pressures
converged to create the Korean War, a conflict that still shapes the politics of Asia.”
According to one review of For
the Common Defense, “Senator Sam NunnMillett and Maslowski have enriched what was already the best single-volume
survey of American military history. Thus crisply-written, revised, and expanded edition of For the Common Defense is must
reading for anyone interested in the course of that history, from the days of colonial militias to those of Desert Storm.” According to the book description of Calculations, “In
the 1990s our political world is returning to a multipolar international system, much like the system in place at the dawn
of World War II. Then as now, the task of accurately evaluating our own and our enemies' capabilities has been essential
for political and defense policy makers. In a multipolar world, in contrast to the bipolar world of the Cold War era, there
are few sureties, and preparedness is critical. Today, we face many of the difficulties and dilemmas of the 1930s as we assess
the abilities of nations to wage war and secure the peace. How did the seven major belligerent nations of World War II determine
their own and their enemies' military capacity, and how did these assessments influence the decision to go to war or the
attempt to avoid it? Calculations combines the perceptive scholarship of seven acknowledged experts steeped in the original
documents of the period.
The result is the first book to examine
systematically how the governments of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union
evaluated their strength against their potential enemies and alongside their potential allies before and during World War
II. Focusing not just on the projected performance of the armed forces or a "bean count" of military technology
and hardware, net assessment takes into account the whole spectrum of economic, military and political power, ideology and
leaders, and demonstrates how these factors interacted in charting a nation's course and determining its fate. The unique
and fascinating perspectives provided by Allan R. Millett, Paul Kennedy, Earl F. Ziemke, Alvin D. Coox, Williamson Murray,
Brian R. Sullivan, Steven Ross, and Calvin L.Christman recreate the world of the great powers on the eve of war by examining
how international relations actually worked in the highly charged diplomatic and military arenas of the 1930s. Rooted firmly
in historical context, and not in abstract theory, these discussions include the actual variables, ambiguities, and elements
of chance that were at work in the real world between the wars. They weigh the failures as well as the successes of each country's
net assessment and demonstrate how World War II's lessons on effectiveness and preparedness are especially valuable today.
They prove that if war is an extension of politics, then net assessment is the handmaiden of political and strategic calculation.”
According to the book description of
Commandants of the Marine Corps, “From personal papers and official documents, prominent historians
of the U.S. Marine Corps present essays on the twenty-seven commandants who served the Corps between 1775 and 1983. Collectively,
their essays trace the history of the Marine Corps through the experiences of the Commandants and their support staff. Each
essay describes a Commandant's personality and outlines his entire career with a focus on his term as Commandant. Frank
assessments are offered of each Commandant's performance and historical significance. The authors include Victor H. Krulak,
Edwin Howard Simmons, Joseph H. Alexander, Merrill Bartlett, and the editors. Introductory essays by Allan R. Millett provide a general interpretation of the history of the Marine Corps through
the leadership of the Commandants and the organizational changes at Headquarters Marine Corps. Millett also outlines the contributions
made by the Commandants serving since 1983. From the appointment of Samuel Nicholas in 1776 to John A. Lejeune in 1920 and
Robert H. Barrow in 1979, this anthology of original essays is the first in terms of focus, research, and analysis to tell
the story of the Marine Corps through the performances of its Commandants.”
According to one review of The
General: Robert L. Bullard and Officership in the United States Army, 1881-1925, “Millett has written
an exceptionally able biography of General Robert L. Bullard, the First World War commander whose military career spans a
crucial time in army development in the U.S. The demanding research that is necessary for thorough treatment has been done,
and this raw material has been put together in a clearly written study that is rich in detail and sound in analysis.” According to the book description of Military
Effectiveness: The Second World War, “This work constitutes the third part of a three-volume set which
analyzes the strategic and military problems of the era spanning the two world wars. This book covers World War II. The other
two volumes in the set address World War I and the interwar period respectively.”
According to the book description of
Their War for Korea: American, Asian, and European Combatants and Civilians, 1945-53, “More
than 36,000 American servicemen died in combat or by other causes during the Korean War. As terrible as this figure is, it
pales in comparison with the war’s nearly two million civilian deaths. And the South Korean armed forces, whose soldiers
were drawn from a male population half the size of the Union’s in the American Civil War, suffered more combat deaths
than the Union army.”
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Publisher’s Weekly said of A
War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, “Scholarship and insight place this book in the front rank
of military history written in the 20th century's final decade. The authors - Murray is senior fellow at Washington's
Institute for Defense Analyses and Millett is a chaired professor of military history at Ohio State - make no secret of their
convictions on personal, institutional and operational issues, but are nevertheless remarkably successful at avoiding the
armchair debunking that mars so many histories of the period. Backed by meticulous operational analysis, Murray and Millett
compellingly view the war as a death grapple between civilization (however imperfect) and genocidal, racist imperialism. Both
sides absorbed unprecedented levels of punishment and still functioned effectively, yet the authors show that the Allies mobilized
resources to an extraordinary degree and developed unprecedented levels of cooperation against Germany and Japan, with U.S.
armed forces in particular demonstrating high learning curves. After recovering from Stalin's purges, by 1943 the Red Army was successfully combining numbers and technology
to take full advantage of every opportunity offered by a declining Wehrmacht. On the other side of the front, instead of making
the hard choices required by Germany's limited resources, Hitler and his military leaders attempted everything simultaneously.
They increasingly substituted ideology for men and equipment. Japan, too, fought a vitalist war, with will power unsuccessfully
substituting for both fire power and rational calculation. The result, Murray and Millett brilliantly show, was to exclude
negotiation and persuasion, leaving victory in battle the only choice in modern history's only total war.”
According to the book description of
Brassey's Mershon American Defense Annual 1996-1997: Current Issues and the Asian Challenge,
“Produced since 1985 by the Mershon Center of the Ohio State University, the American Defense Annual is a comprehensive,
nonpartisan review and analysis of the major issues and trends in American national security policy. Now published by Brassey's,
this edition focuses on the requirements of U.S. defense policy in a new era, highlighting defense and strategic issues for
an uncertain future.”
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