100 Turning Points in Military History

The Critical Decisions, Key Events, and Breakthrough Inventions and Discoveries That Shaped Warfare Around the World

Alan Axelrod

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781493037469
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The typical military history presents a chronicle of battles and wars and the commanders and troops who fought them. This book takes a different approach. It presents battles and wars and people aplenty, but they are not its ultimate subjects. This book is about the turning points that not only make military history dynamic but crucial to the story of humanity and civilization. This book is about the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures that shaped the evolution of military art and science—strategy, tactics, and technology—and, in doing so, shaped the course of world history.

Here are the 100 points—from the birth of warfare in the Battle of Megiddo, 1457 BC, to the ongoing evolution of military history on its newest battlefield, cyberspace—at which the path of the warrior decisively turned on its long journey to where we find ourselves today.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Battle of Megiddo: The Birth of Warfare (1457 BC)
• Tiglath-Pileser III: The Birth of Military Civilization (745–727 BC)
• Sun Tzu: The Birth of Strategy (c. 511 BC)
• Spartans at Thermopylae: The Perfection of Military Civilization (480 BC)
• Battles of Gaugamela and Hydaspes: Alexander Proves His Genius for War (331 and 326 BC)
• Battle of Cannae: Hannibal’s Masterpiece (216 BC)
• Battle of Zama: Hannibal’s Defeat (202 BC)
• Reforms of Marius: The Roman Legion as Model for Military Organization (105 BC)
• Spartacus: History’s First Insurgent (73–71 BC)
• The Gallic Wars: Caesar Rising (58–51 BC)
• Crossing the Rubicon: Caesar Triumphant (49 BC)
• The Pax Romana Begins: Rome Dominant (29 BC)
• Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: The Limits of Imperial Militarism (AD 9)
• Second Battle of Adrianople: The Western Empire Starts to Fall (378)
• Battle of Châlons: The Turning Point That Might Have Been (451)
• Battle of Tours: Muslims v. Franks (732)
• Feudalism as a Military Civilization: Epoch of Knight, Armor, Sword, and Longbow (800–1200)
• Rise of the Raid: Viking Warfare in Ireland, Britain, Western Europe, and Russia (800–1000)
• Battle of Hastings: Why the Norman Conquest Matters (1066)
• War as Pilgrimage: The First Crusade (1096–1099)
• Genghis Khan: The “Perfect War Emperor” (1190–1227)
• Battles of Liegnitz and Sajó River: Mongol Invasions of Europe (1241)
• Swiss Victory at Morgarten Pass: Rise of the Pike and the Mercenaries (1315)
• Battle of Crécy: Infantry Crushes Chivalry’s Flower (1346)
• Battle of Agincourt: When the Knights Fell (1415)
• Joan of Arc in Command: The Power of a “Force Multiplier” (1429–1444)
• Siege of Constantinople: Mehmed II Ascendant (1453)
• Cortés Takes the Aztec Empire: Conquest Comes to the New World (1518–1521)
• Babur Storms North India: Invasion Becomes Empire (1525–1526)
• Battle of Mohács: Christian Europe at Bay (1526)
• The Holy League Triumphs at Lepanto: Victory at Sea (1571)
• Fate of the Spanish Armada: The “Friction of War” (1586–1588)
• “Defenestration of Prague” Begins the Thirty Years’ War: Old Europe Out the Window (1618)
• Gustavus Adolphus at Zenith: Creating Military Supremacy (1631)
• Total Warfare Sweeps New England: Race Wars in the Wilderness (1636–1678)
• Condé v. Turrenne at the Battle of the Dunes: Clash of the Great Captains: (1658)
• Battle of Blenheim: The Perfection of Alliance Warfare (1704)
• Frederick the Great of Prussia: The Making of a Military Superpower (1740–1763)
• France and Britain in India: Imperialism by Proxy War (1751–1760)
• The Battle of Fort Necessity: Young George Washington Starts a World War (1754)
• Frederick’s Victory at Leuthen: “Masterpiece of Maneuver and Resolution” (1757)
• Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill: An American Military Is Born (1775)
• Battle of Trenton: Washington’s Genius for War (1776)
• USS Bonhomme Richard v. HMS Serapis: The One-Man Navy of John Paul Jones (1779)
• Battles of Hondschoote, Menin, and Wattignies: Kingless Victories (1793)
• From Toulon to Campo Formio: The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte (1793–1797)
• Tactics Triumphant: The Age of Napoleon, Clausewitz, and Mahan (1800–1850)
• Barbary Wars: Fighting Terrorism (1801–1815)
• Annus Mirabilis: Napoleon’s Brilliant Year (1805)
• Battle of Trafalgar: Nelson’s Fatal Masterpiece (1805)
• Friedrich Krupp Starts a Steel Works: Artillery Becomes an Industry and War Is Transformed (1811)
• From Moscow to Waterloo: Napoleonic Retreat (1812–1815)
• Choosing War in 1812: America v. Britain (1812–1814)
• Bolívar: The Art of Liberation Warfare (1812–1825)
• The Wars of Shaka Zulu: A Native Empire in Africa (1816–1828)
• Scott Takes Veracruz: The U.S. Army Conducts Its First Amphibious Operation (1847)
• The Great Mutiny in India: Birth of the British Raj (1857–1858)
• Battle of Antietam: Lincoln Wins a Platform for Emancipation (1862)
• The Battle of Gettysburg: The Civil War Finds Purpose: (1863)
• Total War: William T. Sherman and the Calculus of Victory (1864–1865)
• Battle of the Little Bighorn: Shock and Awe on the Northern Plains (1876)
• Industrial Firepower: Hiram Maxim’s Machine Gun (1884)
• Battle of Wounded Knee: How the “Indian Wars” Ended (1890)
• The USS Maine Explodes: Finding an Excuse for War (1898)
• Boers Hold Off an Empire: The High Cost of Insurgent Warfare (1899–1902)
• The Boxer Rebellion: Leveraging a Little War on China (1900)
• The Naval Campaign of Tsushima: Japan Redefines Victory (1905)
• Assassination in Sarajevo: Bringing a World to War (1914)
• From Schlieffen Plan to the Miracle on the Marne: How the Fog of War Descends (1914)
• Unrestricted: Submarine Warfare in World War I (1915–1917)
• Exit the Russians, Enter the Americans: The Disruption of World War I (1917–1918)
• Hutier Tactics: A German General Changes Modern Warfare at Riga (1917)
• Rush to Disarm: The London and Geneva Conferences (1930–1934)
• Rehearsal for a Second Act: The Spanish Civil War Goes Global (1936–1939)
• Blitzkrieg: Germany’s Combined-Arms Invasion of Poland (1939)
• Winston Churchill Becomes Prime Minister: The Role of the Great Man in War (1940)
• Total War: The Blitz, Battle of Britain, and Rationale for Strategic Bombing (1940–1945)
• Enigma and Ultra: Information Becomes War’s Ultimate Weapon (1939–1945)
• The Aircraft Carrier: A New Platform for War (1942)
• The Battle of Midway: What a Turning Point Looks Like (1942)
• Holocaust: The Wannsee Conference Plans the “Final Solution” (1942)
• Battle of Stalingrad: The Tide Turns on the Eastern Front (1942)
• Operation Overlord and the D-Day Landings: Breakthrough from the West (1944)
• Hiroshima, August 6: The New Wages of War (1945)
• The National Security Act Is Passed: The United States Remodels Its Military (1947)
• Berlin Blockade and Berlin Airlift: A Model Cold War Victory (1948–1949)
• A Treaty Signed in Brussels: The Creation of NATO (1949)
• The Birth of “Limited War”: Finding a “Substitute for Victory” in Korea (1950–1951)
• Battle of Dien Bien Phu: The Domino Theory Emerges (1954)
• Herman Kahn Publishes On Thermonuclear War: Challenging the MAD Doctrine (1960)
• The Cuban Missile Crisis: Strategy at the Thermonuclear Brink (1962)
• The Arab-Israeli War of June 5–10: Three Fronts, Six Days, Total Victory (1967)
• The Tet Offensive: Pyrrhic Victory in the Vietnam War (1968)
• My Lai Massacre and the Pentagon Papers: The Road to an All-Volunteer Force (1969–1971)
• Limits of Military Superpower: The Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979–1981)
• The Gulf War: The Architecture of Coalition Warfare (1990)
• From the F-117A to the Predator: The Rise of Stealth and Drone Weapons Technology (1989–1994)
• The Bosnian War: European Tribalism (1992–1995)
• “The First War of the Twenty-first Century”: 9/11 and the Era of Endless American War (2001– )
• The Bronze Soldier of Tallinn: Cyber Becomes the New Battlefield (2007)