Military professionals and theorists have long understood the relevance of morale in war. Montgomery, the victor at El Alamein, said, following the battle, that 'the more fighting I see, the more I am convinced that the big thing in war is morale'. Jonathan Fennell, in examining the North African campaign through the lens of morale, challenges conventional explanations for Allied success in one of the most important and controversial campaigns in British and Commonwealth history. He introduces new sources, notably censorship summaries of soldiers' mail, and an innovative methodology that assesses troop morale not only on the evidence of personal observations and official reports but also on contemporaneously recorded rates of psychological breakdown, sickness, desertion and surrender. He shows for the first time that a major morale crisis and stunning recovery decisively affected Eighth Army's performance during the critical battles on the Gazala and El Alamein lines in 1942.

The product of a collaboration between a career police psychologist and a consulting psychologist, The Blue Morale Project: A Program to Cultivate High Morale in Law Enforcement Professionals is a book designed to shed much needed light on the nationwide crisis of morale currently being experienced by police officers and law enforcement personnel. The authors explore the factors underlying the problem from a socio-psychological perspective and outline a program that law enforcement agencies can implement to facilitate input on morale-related matters from all personnel. Advance copies of the manuscript were distributed for review to a sampling of police chiefs as well as current and former members of related agencies (ranging from the FBI to the District Attorney's office), and the reaction to this book and its promise of addressing morale-related issues has been very enthusiastic. Additionally, the morale-building program outlined in the book is complemented by a companion website (bluemorale.com) wherein registered members of the site can participate in online discussion forums dedicated to identifying concerns related to blue morale, and the brainstorming of viable strategies and solutions.

Gary Sheffield is one of the most versatile and stimulating of military historians at work today. For 25 years, in a series of perceptive books and articles, he has examined the First World War from many angles - from the point of view of the politicians and the high command through to the junior officers and other ranks in the front line. Morale and Command presents in a single volume a range of his shorter work, and it shows his scholarship at its best. The range of his writing, the insights he offers and the sometimes controversial conclusions he reaches mean this thought-provoking book will be indispensable reading for all students of the First World War and of modern warfare in general.

“Bramall . . . became the finest military theorist of his generation. His sage words should be required reading for politicians of all hues.” —The Daily Telegraph Over the course of his seventy-five-year career Field Marshal Bramall or Dwin as he is universally known has been in the forefront of military thinking. Clearly destined to reach the pinnacle of his profession he shone in a succession of prestigious appointments both in command and on the staff. He fought in Normandy, saw active service in Ireland and Borneo and masterminded the Falklands Campaign. As this unique collection of personal Papers, dating from the 1950s to the present day, testifies, Bramall has never shied away from controversy or original thought, whether on low level leadership or higher military strategy. His views are far from predictable or trenchant as demonstrated by his changing nuclear stance and his clearly argued opposition in the House of Lords to intervention in Iraq. The publication of this unique collection of letters, lectures, speeches and theses on a wide range of topics gives the reader the opportunity to delve into a rich mine of sound military thinking and common sense. “The Bramall Papers are in their way a unique anthology of strategic and tactical wisdom. They ought perhaps to be inscribed with the words of Caesar Augustus: ‘Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.’” —The Spectator “This highly decorated field marshal is consequently no ordinary veteran, and his book The Bramall Papers is a fascinating insight into one of Britain’s foremost military minds.” —History of War

Italian performance in the First World War has been generally disparaged or ignored compared to that of the armies on the Western Front, and troop morale in particular has been seen as a major weakness of the Italian army. In this first book-length study of Italian morale in any language, Vanda Wilcox reassesses Italian policy and performance from the perspective both of the army as an institution and of the ordinary soldiers who found themselves fighting a brutally hard war. Wilcox analyses and contextualises Italy's notoriously hard military discipline along with leadership, training methods and logistics before considering the reactions of the troops and tracing the interactions between institutions and individuals. Restoring historical agency to soldiers often considered passive and indifferent, Wilcox illustrates how and why Italians complied, endured or resisted the army's demands through balancing their civilian and military identities.

The Second World War era Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the forerunner of today's CIA. During the war the organisation planned and executed thousands of covert operations behind enemy lines from North Africa to Europe to Asia. This publication reproduces the OSS' 1943 Morale Operations Field Manual. It describes the techniques used by OSS to damage the enemy's morale. Today we'd call it "Psychological Operations". This is near-perfect reproduction of the original publication with all wartime classification markings intact. With the originals all but extinct outside the US National Archives' OSS collection, this series is a must-have for any military scholar or for special operations or intelligence community personnel wishing to honor their heritage. The titles available in this series include: Special Operations Field Manual Operational Groups Field Manual Simple Sabotage Field Manual Secret Intelligence Field Manual Morale Operations Field Manual Maritime Unit Field Manual