Reddit reviews Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present
We found 5 Reddit comments about Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Liveright Publishing Corporation
Thank you everyone for the laughs and the subtle concern. As mentioned here, I've been incredibly busy. This is all good stuff and I'm truly blessed. A few of the goings on:
Once more, thank you all for the laughs and subtle concern. Thank you /u/linuxuser86 for making this post. If any of you have questions please email me any time: [email protected]
Lots of great answers everyone. I see that I have a lot of reading to do and that is a good thing. Just for anyone also interested I compiled all of the named books into a list and sourced them, for your reading pleasure.
The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen
Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen
Out of the Mountains by David Kilcullen
Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam by John Nagl
Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods by John Poole
Modern War: Counter-Insurgency as Malpractice by Edward Luttwak
A Savage War of Peace by Alistar Horne
The Bear Went Over the Mountain by Lester Grau
Invisible Armies by Max Boot
Vid Putivla do Karpat by Sydir Artemovych Kovpac
Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald
Inside Rebellion by Jeremy M. Weinstein
There are a lot of leftist groups in South America which have had some real longevity, if not success, such as The Shining Path and FARC. There's the Taliban, who really started out as a protection racket for the Pakistani ISI and bloomed into a Islamist revolutionary army, and then a state, and then an insurgency. The Bush War between the Rhodesians, especially the Selous Scouts, and groups like the ZANU is pretty fascinating. Probably the most successful was Giuseppe Garibaldi who started as an insurgent fighter in both South America and Europe before eventually unifying the Italian state.
I'd highly recommend Invisible Armies by Max Boot. I think it would be right up your alley.
EDIT: After rereading your post I think you may be looking more toward "unconventional warfare" teams than "Guerrilla groups". I'd check out the CIA and Special Forces operations with the Montagnards in Southeast Asia, who ran five or ten man teams with local fighters against communist forces in Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos. The Brandenburgers of the German Abwehr were also really fascinating. They ran teams of commandos who were often bi-national or born overseas to run operations in their respective ethnic areas behind enemy lines in World War Two. One of their more famous ops had Russian speaking commandos dressing up as NKVD troops in Crimea and then directing Soviet troop formations on the way to the front in the wrong direction. After the war quite a few of them disappeared, with some ending up in the French Foreign Legion, if legends are to be believed.
Cannot agree more.
Here is a book I thought was brilliant book.
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Armies-History-Guerrilla-Warfare/dp/0871406888
If you're quite interested, I'd recommend Invisible Armies by Max Boot. It'll take some time to get through but it covers every major insurgency in recorded history and he's a pretty good writer so the read goes faster than expected.