Engines of War
How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The birth of the railway in the early 1830's revolutionized the way the world waged war. From armored engines with swiveling guns, to the practice of track sabotage, to the construction of tracks that crossed frozen Siberian lakes, the "iron road" facilitated conflict on a scale that was previously unimaginable. It not only made armies more mobile, but widened fighting fronts and increased the power and scale of available weaponry; a deadly combination.
In Engines of War, Christian Wolmar examines all the engagements in which the railway played a part: the Crimean War; the American Civil War; both world wars; the Korean War; and the Cold War, with its mysterious missile trains; and illustrates how the railway became a deadly weapon exploited by governments across the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
U.K. railway historian Wolmar (Blood, Iron Gold: How Railways Transformed the World) says that the importance of railways in war has been greatly underplayed by historians. As Wolmar sees it, "the creation of the railways led to a tremendous escalation of the scale of warfare," and they were used in an increasingly strategic way in military operations. The American Civil War was the first genuine railway war, delivering troops to the front and at battlegrounds determined by the railroad's location. Basic information on each conflict provides a backdrop for the role of railroads in the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Japanese War (triggered by the 5,700-mile-long Trans-Siberian Railway), WWI, and WWII. The WWII chapter covers both air attacks on railway installations and the transport of Holocaust victims. Closing pages cover the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the end of the cold war when America and Russia both began work on railway-based ICBMs. Yet railways' expensive infrastructure made it inevitable that motorized transport would take over. Wolmar writes with an authoritative tone and solid research on how railroads, with their ability to move vast numbers of troops, made "industrial-scale carnage possible." Illus.; maps.
