Someone Who Fights As Part Of An Unofficial Army?

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Is it guerrilla or guerilla

‘Gorilla’ or ‘Guerrilla’? Gorilla war. Gorilla tactics. Gorilla groups. Why do we often involve anthropoid apes of equatorial Africa in our talk of warfare? On some level the idea makes sense: gorillas are powerful creatures, capable of great destruction, and the new Planet of the Apes movies have been uniformly great. There aren’t many street teams (or streets) in the rain forest, either. They look different but sound the same, so it’s no surprise that those unaccustomed to seeing guerrilla in print might accidentally refer to Koko and co. Guerrilla (also less commonly spelled guerilla ) has been used in English since the early 19th century to refer to someone who engages in irregular warfare, especially as part of an independent unit that uses tactics like raids and sabotage to wear down its enemy.

It’s Spanish in origin; guerrilla is the of guerra, meaning “war.” Guerrilla is also used as an adjective to describe things that relate to or suggest militant guerrillas, modifying words like fighter, group, forces, movement, operations, etc. The word also gets used to describe less violent things that are similarly radical or unconventional.

A guerrilla marketing campaign, for example, might use graffiti or a giant inflatable mascot. The apes have nothing to do with any of this, of course—unless your marketing campaign uses a giant inflatable gorilla, in which case you have a “gorilla guerrilla marketing campaign.” : ‘Gorilla’ or ‘Guerrilla’?

What is a guerrilla in simple terms

: a member of a band of persons engaged in warfare not as part of a regular army but as an independent unit making surprise raids behind enemy lines. guerrilla adjective. Etymology. Noun. from Spanish guerrilla, literally, ‘small war,’ from guerra ‘war’

Is Guerilla a war crime?

Being a guerrilla isn’t a war crime.

What is called as guerilla warfare?

WAR OF THE FLEA – A STUDY OF GUERILLA WARFARE – THEORY AND PRACTICE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MODERN GUERRILLA WARFARE ARE EXAMINED BY A JOURNALIST WHO HAS COVERED REVOLUTIONS ON TWO CONTINENTS. EXAMPLES FROM CUBA, CHINA, SOUTHEAST ASIA, AND OTHER COUNTRIES ARE PRESENTED.

1. GUERRILLA WARFARE IS THE EXTENSION OF POLITICS BY MEANS OF ARMED CONFLICT.
2. REVOLUTION IS ITS GOAL.
3. GUERRILLA FIGHTERS ARE POLITICAL PARTISANS: ARMED CIVILIANS WHOSE MAIN WEAPONS ARE THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO THE COMMUNITIES IN AND FOR WHICH THEY FIGHT.
4. THE STRENGTH OF THE GUERRILLAS LIES IN THEIR MOBILITY, FLEXIBILITY, ENDLESS SOURCES OF MANPOWER, AND THE FACT THAT TIME WORKS IN THEIR FAVOR.

GUERRILLA WARFARE IS THEREFORE LIKE THE FLEA, WHICH DEFEATS THE MUCH LARGER AND STRONGER DOG THROUGH PERSISTENCE. GUERRILLAS EXPLOIT THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THEIR OPPONENTS’ GOAL (DEFEAT OF THE GUERRILLAS) AND NECESSARY MEANS (OVERWHELMING FORCE) TO THE ADVANTAGE OF THE GUERRILLA MOVEMENT.

ANALYSES OF THE CONFLICTS IN CUBA, CHINA, VIETNAM, IRELAND, AND ELSEWHERE ILLUSTRATE THESE CONCEPTS AND THE POLITICAL USES OF TERRORISM, THE KEY ROLE PLAYED BY TERRAIN, AND THE STRATEGY OF URBAN GUERRILLA WARFARE. GUERRILLA MOVEMENT FAILURES IN GREECE, PHILIPPINES, AND MALAYA SHOW THAT SEVERING POPULAR CONTACT AND SUPPORT CAN DOOM A GUERRILLA MOVEMENT.

THE VIETNAM CONFLICT DEMONSTRATES BOTH THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A GUERRILLA MOVEMENT AND THE FAILURE OF CONVENTIONAL FORCES OR SPECIAL COUNTERINSURGENCY EFFORTS TO DEFEAT IT. IT IS CONCLUDED THAT GUERRILLA WAR IS A NATURAL WEAPON WHICH IMPOVERISHED AND EXPLOITED PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD USE TO ACHIEVE REVOLUTION AND WILL, THEREFORE, INCREASE IN MUCH OF AFRICA, ASIA, ARAB COUNTRIES, AND LATIN AMERICA.

What does Fredric mean in English?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frederick

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and the Eagle
Pronunciation	FRED -ər-ik
Gender	Male
Name day	July 18
Origin
Word/name	Germanic
Meaning	“peaceful ruler”
Other names
Related names	Frid, Fritz, Rick, Ricky, Fred, Fedde, Freddy, Redd, Friedrich, Federico, Fredrik

Frederick is a masculine given name meaning “peaceful ruler”. It is the English form of the German name Friedrich, Its meaning is derived from the Germanic word elements frid, or peace, and ric, meaning ” ruler ” or ” power “. Frederick ranked among the top 100 names in the United States between 1880 and 1957 and has declined thereafter.

1. It was ranked as the 536th most popular name for boys in 2009 in the United States,
2. It ranked as the 99th most popular name for boys in England and Wales in 2007.
3. Freddy, a short form, ranked as the 60th most popular name for boys in England and Wales in 2008.
4. Short form Fred was among the most popular names for boys in Lower Saxony, Germany in 2010.

Frederica is a feminine variant of the name Frederick.

What is the meaning of the word magistrat?

A person who acts as a judge in a law court that deals with crimes that are less serious : He will appear before the magistrates tomorrow.

What is the full meaning of balladeer

Balladeer (plural balladeers) A singer, particularly a professional singer who performs ballads.

What genre is guerrilla

Guerrilla (album)

Guerrilla
Genre	Alternative rock, electronic, Neo-psychedelia
Length	51:47
Label	Creation
Producer	Super Furry Animals

What is the difference between insurgency and guerrilla

As Western policymakers and researchers reflect upon the lessons of two decades of the Global War on Terrorism, they should assess the ways in which the terminology used to frame and analyze terrorist activity contributed to strategic frustration, Terrorism—a ” substate application of violence or threatened violence intended to sow panic in a society, to weaken or even overthrow the incumbents, and to bring about political change “—is a tactic that can serve multiple strategic purposes.

For example, it has been used by the Islamic State to subvert and intimidate the Iraqi military, and then to consolidate control over the Iraqi population; by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Liberation Organization to undermine Western interests as proxies of the Soviet Union in the broader Cold War ; by Hezbollah to coerce Western powers to withdraw from the Lebanese civil war; and by the Croatian Ustaša in the 1930s as a form of surrogate political warfare,

There is no singular model for terrorist group operations. A war on terrorism is thus a poor strategic lens for understanding the irregular conflicts in which the United States and its allies have been involved for the past two decades. The use of the term terrorism also carries moral overtones that can cloud appropriate Western responses,

• Instead, terrorism is best viewed as a tactic of provocative violence against civilians; it may be employed by any actor to support or repress change by drawing attention to a cause.
• Understanding when and why an irregular or nonstate actor might choose to employ this and other tactics is crucial, emphasizing the importance of academic work focused on irregular warfare such as that undertaken by the Joint Special Operations University, US Army Special Operations Command’s Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies series, and the Modern War Institute,

Still, researchers and policymakers should further examine strategic classifications of irregular or nonstate adversaries to more accurately frame assessments of past operations and improve the outcomes of future conflicts. To address this gap, a new strategy-based model is needed, using the terms guerrillas, revolutionaries, insurgents, and militias and mafiosi —GRIM threats.

This taxonomy anticipates dynamic adaptation on the part of irregular adversaries. It seeks to articulate the evolving characteristics and goals of nonstate actors at different stages of development, capability, and threat, while identifying the logic of violence behind the tactical use of terrorism.

Armed with this framework, policymakers and practitioners can better tailor their responses to evolving irregular threats. Ill-Suited Terminology The broadly applied Western lexicon vilifies irregular actors, marginalizes their objectives, and dilutes examination of why each actor rebels,

This nomenclature challenge is particularly marked in Australian policy. In stark contrast to the United States’ Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy, Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update does not meaningfully engage with irregular or unconventional threats. This absence of terminology has produced a policy void.

The war on terrorism for Australia thereby became an astrategic environment in which Australian military contributions to US-led operations took place without ” serious public or parliamentary debate ” regarding the nature of the threat or the necessary response.

1. This Australian policy gap stands in marked contrast to earlier doctrinal understanding of historical use of terrorism, such as Communist revolutionary warfare during the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War.
2. Like Australia, the United States suffers from a nomenclature problem that limits understanding of irregular threats.

And this problem extends beyond Western governments and militaries. Academic discourse frequently conflates irregular warfare terminology such as rebel, guerrilla, bandit, insurgent, militia, and terrorist in seemingly synonymous or inconsistent ways.

• The absence of clarity suggests an absence of analysis—a reflection of the fact that policymakers view irregular actors as low-priority irritants.
• Building a Strategy-Based Taxonomy This article expands on previous efforts to solve this problem by proposing a strategy-based taxonomy of nonstate actors using the terms guerrillas, revolutionaries, insurgents, and militias and mafiosi —GRIM threats.

These distinctions are arrayed based upon two axes—scale of desired change and timeframe—that pertain to the strategy a group pursues. These distinctions create fuzzy edges between categories and a central, overlapping conceptual space in which terrorist tactics might be employed.

Distinguished in this manner, irregular strategy can be contextualized along an existing strategic spectrum—namely, Hans Delbrück’s distinction between strategies of annihilation ( Niederwerfungsstrategie ) and exhaustion or attrition ( Ermattungsstrategie ). Thus, with this geometric array, militias and revolutionaries are focused on the “now”—adhering to annihilation—while insurgents and guerrillas “have the time”—adhering to exhaustion.

This two-axis model is shown graphically below. Militias and Mafiosi The category of militias and mafiosi captures the transition from a movement—a group of people espousing a political idea—into an organization that seeks to employ violence to realize its idea. Initially, this organization may assume the form of an incipient clandestine network.

As Scott Gates notes, by definition, such groups operate illegally and exhibit “many of the internal organizational characteristics of organized criminal groups, such as the Mafia.” The resources required by this incipient organization (such as weapons, intelligence, and military hardware like night-vision equipment) and the sourcing of funding (such as robbery, extortion, or the bypassing of international financial transfers) might likewise be illegal, branding a nascent group as bandits or brigands,

Irregular organizations begin as clandestine networks that must organize popular support in order to survive. Many do not succeed. Identity-based distinctions—a particular village, a particular clan, a particular religious sect—might define the organization at this point.

Such incipient networks emerge as armed groups challenging the writ of the state, at which point they are generally defensive in orientation (due to weakness and an objective of protecting themselves), are fragmented or vanguard organizations, and do not pursue decisive change. Indeed, a mafiosi element emerges in which nascent organizations that seek resources and illicit activities thrive in the un- or undergoverned spaces that facilitate their growth.

Guerrillas A guerrilla fights a protracted war of attrition or exhaustion. From the Iberian Peninsula in the 1800s to Burmese tribesmen in World War II, guerrilla strategy has been characterized by offensive hit-and-run engagements, generally against lines of communication or isolated outposts, with the aim of exhausting an adversary.

History has demonstrated the validity of this logic as a French participant to the Iberian campaign, J.F.A. Lemière de Corvey, observed as far back as 1823: One hundred and fifty to two hundred guerrilla bodies throughout Spain each took a vow to kill thirty or forty Frenchmen a month, making six to eight thousand men a month for all the guerrilla bands.

The attrition of Napoleon’s Grande Armée in Russia in 1812 punished his bold advance and prompted a withdrawal of French troops from Iberia to reconstitute lost forces. Between 1942 and 1944, a million Axis troops were fixed in place in Yugoslavia and progressively weakened by attrition through countless partisan ambushes and raids.

A guerrilla group’s strategy retains its small-war and parochial characteristics, generally seeking change only within a particular district, valley, or mountain range. Offensive action requires support—ideological, materiel, and intelligence. But as Bernard Fall notes, the armed component that conducts “guerrilla warfare is nothing but a tactical appendage of a far vaster political contest and,

no matter how expertly it is fought by competent and dedicated professionals, it cannot possibly make up for the absence of a political rationale.” Guerrilla strategy is thus an extension of preestablished defensive militia networks, themselves a manifestation of a broader political movement.

1. These layers of ideological support create local sanctuaries, metaphorical estuaries for the rebellious fish in a sea of popular support that provide the group’s logistics requirements.
2. Internationalized patron support markedly enables the capability of rebel groups and is thus often present within this strategy.

Insurgents Insurgency is “a protracted political-military activity directed toward completely or partially controlling the resources of a country through the use of irregular military forces and illegal political organizations.” It differs from a localized guerrilla organization by having national, or even international, objectives.

• The primary goal is state exhaustion—of an enemy near or far—often requiring internationalized support and popular legitimacy through effective shadow governance,
• Competition for control over the population is all-encompassing, as insurgent organizations typically use welfare as warfare and forms of rebelocracy to govern areas they control.

Insurgent strategy is thus characterized by development as an integrated organization and may field people’s armies of conventional military capability working in concert with guerrilla elements and localized militias. Revolutionaries Revolutionaries pursue the forcible overthrow of a government through mass mobilization of a significant component of the population.

1. This differentiates a revolution from a coup d’état and lends legitimacy in the eyes of the local population.
2. Revolutionary strategy relies upon the seeds of clandestine organization that guide the masses.
3. It is marked by rapid change that results from a schism within the power structures of the state.

As Hannah Arendt notes : “Generally speaking, we may say that no revolution is even possible where the authority of the body politic is truly intact, and this means, under modern conditions, where the armed forces can be trusted to obey the civil authorities.” Thus, “revolutionists in modern society do not so much ‘seize’ power as destroy and re-create it.” Tracing Nonstate Actor Evolution Irregular challengers often begin as small, clandestine networks (militias or mafiosi)—often based upon preconflict friendship or familial groups —that take time to develop grassroots support, organize, and mobilize against authority.

1. Their structures and strategies evolve based upon their objectives and their strength.
2. Too fast an evolution and groups will likely lack cohesion, providing opportunities for the security forces to infiltrate, target, or foment factional splits and infighting.
3. Too slow an evolution and a decline in popular support will likely manifest through conflict fatigue, disillusionment with irregular leaders, or the emergence of more radicalized competing factions.

Irregular actors are not static entities; they adopt particular formulations depending upon the level of popular discontent, the strength of their organizations, and the state of competition for control over their target populations. There are two paths of evolution within the taxonomy.

• First is a counterclockwise progression from clandestine militia networks to guerrillas, insurgents, and then revolutionaries—a pathway that describes Cold War–era Communist revolutionary warfare doctrine.
• That an insurgency might attempt one or more Tet-like revolutionary escalations demonstrates the challenge in successfully adopting a classic revolutionary strategy and perhaps encourages rebels to adopt a Maoist progression into a people’s army to exhaust its challenger, rather than seek its collapse.

The second pathway describes a direct revolutionary challenge: development from a clandestine network to a group aiming to directly spark a revolution. This represents the Leninist model that culminates in a coup d’état, David Galula’s shortcut pattern, and the Che Guevara–prescribed focoist progression. An improved taxonomy regarding irregular warfare can assist policymakers and practitioners in responding to contemporary and emerging forms of irregular conflict. By understanding the maturity and trajectory of a nonstate actor based on its stage of development and current strategy, policymakers can tailor interventions to disrupt the group’s structure and activities.

• Armed with this taxonomy, analysts should recognize that aggressive counterterrorism actions against local self-defense militias will yield the accidental guerrilla —trapping us in a vicious cycle of so-called wars on terrorism.
• Western governments must improve their lexicon about nonstate adversaries in order to learn from—and avoid repeating—the last twenty years of conflict.

Major Andrew Maher is an Australian chief of army scholar, a visiting fellow and lecturer with the University of New South Wales Canberra on irregular warfare, and a doctoral candidate examining the strategy of proxy warfare. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, the United States Department of the Army, the United States Department of Defense, the Australian Army, or the Australian Department of Defence.

What makes a guerrilla?

Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians including recruited children, use ambushes, sabotage, terrorism, raids, petty warfare or hit-and-run tactics in a rebellion, in a violent conflict, in a

Which army is best in guerilla warfare

Organization – Simplified view of the Viet Cong organization. Functions such as security or propaganda were duplicated at each admin. level. Guerrilla warfare resembles rebellion, yet it is a different concept. Guerrilla organization ranges from small, local rebel groups of a few dozen guerrillas, to thousands of fighters, deploying from cells to regiments.

1. In most cases, the leaders have clear political aims for the warfare they wage.
2. Typically, the organization has political and military wings, to allow the political leaders “plausible denial” for military attacks.
3. The most fully elaborated guerrilla warfare structure is by the Chinese and Vietnamese communists during the revolutionary wars of East and Southeast Asia.

A simplified example of this more sophisticated organizational type – used by revolutionary forces during the Vietnam War, is shown above.

What country is guerrilla from?

Just because they’re guerillas doesn’t mean they’re primitive. The Sioux and Apache tribes of North America had something profound in common with the colonists who established the United States. Like the Viet Cong, the Spanish irregulars who frustrated Napoleon, and the Afghan tribesmen who defeated the Soviet army and continue to challenge U.S.

1. And NATO forces in our own day, they were guerrillas.
2. The word “guerrilla” comes from the Spanish for “little war,” used to describe Spain’s 1808 uprising against Napoleon’s troops, but such a way of fighting is as old as human civilization itself.
3. Guerrilla warfare is a rational response to overwhelming and organized force, the means by which the weak can frustrate, wear down, and overcome the strong, whether they be British troops at Lexington and Concord, French and later American troops in the Mekong Delta, or Hitler’s Wehrmacht in Yugoslavia.

It is the great merit of Max Boot’s study of guerrilla war that he stresses the venerable history of this style of fighting, starting with Thucydides’s account of how the Aetolian highlanders used their maneuverability and knowledge of the local terrain to defeat the hoplites of Athens in 426 BC.

As soon as organized states began to form and to equip themselves with disciplined armies, they were opposed by enemies fighting in an older style. Boot writes, “Throughout most of our species’ long and bloody slog warfare has been carried out primarily by bands of loosely organized, ill-disciplined, lightly armed volunteers who disdain open battle.

They prefer to employ stealth, surprise, and rapid movement to harass, ambush, massacre, and terrorize their enemies while trying to minimize their own casualties through rapid retreat when confronted by equal or stronger forces. These are the primary features both of modern guerrilla warfare and of primitive, pre-state warfare.” This does not necessarily imply that the guerrilla is a primitive.

The surviving gold artwork of the Scythians of the sixth century BC demonstrates that they were a sophisticated people who preferred the nomadic existence that was suited to their grassland steppes. When the Persian emperor Darius demanded that they stand and fight, the Scythian leader Idanthyrsus replied, “We Scythians have neither towns nor cultivated lands, which might induce us, through fear of their being taken or ravaged, to be in any hurry to fight with you.

We shall not join battle unless it pleases us.” Armies are large and complex organizations, with training academies for officers and their own medical, financial, judicial, and logistics services; and they are usually designed to fight other armies of similar type.

Sometimes armies develop the necessary skills and doctrine in time to prevail over unconventional forces. At the turn of the last century, the British eventually defeated the Boers of South Africa, brilliant guerillas of Dutch descent who had trekked north from the Cape Colony in a vain attempt to escape British rule.

And British troops were able to quell a mainly Chinese and communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. But they lost to the Jewish irregulars in Palestine in the 1940s, and spent 30 grim years after 1968 convincing the Republicans of Northern Ireland that democratic politics would be preferable to continued urban guerrilla warfare.

• Given the extraordinary range of experience the British Empire accumulated in fighting various guerrilla campaigns, Britain’s armies have a better record than most.
• But their leaders could still be convinced, as in Palestine, that the possibility of success was too remote and too expensive to justify the effort.

The Obama administration, having reviewed the results of a decade of war, seems to have made a similar appraisal of the current Afghan campaign. Professional military men usually find such calculations difficult to make. They are trained to apply force and accept casualties in order to achieve military victory.

A great merit of democratic government is that the politicians can overrule the generals and apply political considerations to the overall strategy, which is what President Richard Nixon did in Vietnam, reducing the American investment in the draining conflict and leaving another president to swallow defeat in 1975, when Saigon finally fell.

Sometimes the politicians find it hard to persuade the soldiers. French president Charles de Gaulle was confronted with a military coup and then a prolonged terrorist campaign by the Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète, a French paramilitary group, when he gave up on the cause of French Algeria in 1961.

For a political leader, the decision to pursue or to end a war comes down to a cost-benefit analysis: Can the political price of military defeat be afforded? In wars of choice, when little save prestige and moderate strategic advantage are at stake, the price is often worth paying if the opponent is sufficiently determined to keep inflicting costs and casualties.

Opponents tend to understand this, and their target is not simply the enemy forces but their political will. This was how Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh fought the French and the Americans. It was also how George Washington endured the winter at Valley Forge, before going on, with help from the American guerrilla Francis Marion, known as the Swamp Fox, to outlast the British resolve to continue the war.

1. Boot makes the neat point that the term “public opinion” made its first appearance at this time, in the works of historian Edward Gibbon.
2. As Boot comments, “A parliamentary government could not prosecute a war that did not enjoy popular backing.”) For the guerrillas, the stakes are usually much higher than they are for their enemies.

The guerillas are fighting wars of necessity rather than of choice, against foreign (or heretical) domination or intolerable rule. The Swamp Fox wore a leather hat with a silver plate engraved with the motto “Liberty or Death.” But one contradiction inherent to guerrilla warfare is that in order to survive, guerrillas usually have to impose at least as draconian a level of discipline and punishment as their opponents do.

The guerrilla cannot afford to give quarter to traitors, spies, or deserters; and atrocities against enemy troops and their civilian sympathizers are common in waging war on the enemy’s morale and political will. The line between a guerrilla and a terrorist can be a fine one. Marion, a guerrilla of genius who had learned his trade fighting the Cherokees, raided British and Loyalist outposts, attacked their supply trains, and eluded capture by fleeing to the South Carolina swamps.

Directed by South Carolina governor John Rutledge to target escaped slaves who had joined the British in return for their freedom, Marion was also ordered to execute slaves who had helped the British with supplies or intelligence. It is worth recording that at least one of Marion’s own slaves ran away to fight for the British, a detail excised from the hagiographic Hollywood film The Patriot (2000), in which Mel Gibson’s character was based in part on Marion.

Another contradiction is that in order to achieve full success, the guerrilla usually has to build a conventional army, or at least find an allied army for the final, decisive battles. It was North Vietnamese regulars who took Saigon, not the Viet Cong, and regular French and American forces who forced the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, just as it was Wellington’s troops who finally ejected from Spain the Napoleonic armies that had been shredded by six years of guerrilla war.

And a hazard of guerrilla fighting is that organized armies can themselves exploit guerrilla tactics, as was done, for example, during World War II, when Britain’s Long Range Desert Group sent commando troops deep behind German lines in North Africa to destroy warplanes at their bases, a trick the British repeated in the Falkland Islands in 1982.

1. Britain wasn’t the only country to use such tactics during World War II: the Red Army fought a conventional war against the Wehrmacht while partisans behind German lines attacked the railways and logistics bases on which the Germans depended.
2. The lesson of the endless examples Boot cites is that guerrillas can be militarily defeated, if a conventional army is itself prepared to go guerrilla and form small, fast-moving units for hunting down the enemy, often with the help of local trackers and renegades.

Boot notes that in 1886, General Nelson Miles finally hunted down the Apache fighter Geronimo with “a picked force of 55 soldiers, 30 mule packers, and 29 Apache scouts” after “one of the most arduous operations in the history of the U.S. Army.” Boot made his name with The Savage Wars of Peace (2002), an accomplished history of America’s small wars that made him a useful source of advice for American generals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Invisible Armies, after an exhaustive but brisk canter throughout the small wars of history, brilliantly sums up the lessons of the centuries. Guerrilla warfare is deeply political, since the fighters’ lack of formal organization means they depend on civilians for food and intelligence. The civilians thus become a strategic factor in the battle, wooed and also targeted by both sides, and sometimes removed from the battlefield altogether, as in the Boer War, when the British were finally able to defeat the Boer farmers by removing their wives and families to concentration camps.

As the cases of the Irish Republican Army and the Basque separatist force known as the ETA show, guerillas can sometimes be bought off with political concessions. But the conflict does not simply hinge on winning the hearts and minds of the local population from whom the guerrillas draw fighters and support.

Just as important is the state of the people’s physical security and their assessment of which side is likely to prevail. Guerrillas must be fought tactically on their own terms, hunted down, denied bases and support, and forced to keep moving and to abandon (or kill) their wounded. Strategically, however, they are fought through the politics of effective local administration.

The British won in Malaya because they took the landless Chinese laborers from their shantytowns and installed them in well-run and well-guarded “New Villages” with medical services and sanitation, an arrangement that made the Chinese amenable to the daily searches that ensured that no rice was being smuggled out to the guerrillas.

The British dried up the sea in which the guerrillas swam, even as their own guerrilla-style troops hunted down the bands relentlessly, one by one. When the Americans tried to do the same in South Vietnam, their good intentions were frustrated by corrupt local administrations that stole funds and supplies and extracted bribes or free labor from occupants.

The “strategic hamlets” cordoned off by U.S. forces became unpleasant for their inhabitants and thus counterproductive. Thanks to its experience against Iraqis and Afghans, and to the wisdom of thoughtful soldiers such as General David Petraeus (who was the driving force behind the excellent new U.S.

Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual), the Army should now be well equipped to wage guerrilla warfare and to pursue the joint civil-military operations such conflicts require. Ironically, it is seeking to do so just as American politicians appear intent on withdrawing from Afghanistan. The public seems to have had quite enough of such distant fights, and the rise of a strategic peer competitor in China is focusing U.S.

military attention back on conventional strategies. This may be a mistake. An army often finds itself fighting a war for which it is not well prepared, since that is precisely the kind of war an intelligent enemy will choose to wage. And if there is one arena where the hit-and-run and clandestine tactics of the guerrilla seem likely in the future, it is the electronic swamps and jungles of cyberspace.

Was Vietnam a guerilla warfare?

PRINTER FRIENDLY PDF Abstract: In the past decades, most conformist studies dedicated to the Vietnam War were overly critical of the U.S. military’s so-called reliance on conventional warfare in a country deemed to be plagued by an insurgency. Counterinsurgency programs were labeled weak and powerless to shift the Americans’ momentum against the Viet Cong, which outsmarted the U.S.

• Military. This article opposes these theories and suggests that by 1969, the U.S.
• Force’s reliance on conventional warfare against the guerrillas progressively morphed into a strategy that fully supported the military’s counterinsurgency initiatives.
• Vietnam was a hybrid warfare theater, which required the Americans to fight both the Viet Cong guerrillas and Hanoi’s conventional forces.

Through the analysis of U.S. and Communist documents, this study suggests that the Americans succeeded in offsetting the Communists’ tactical approach to hybrid warfare. As they skillfully synchronized regular warfare with counterinsurgency, the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces succeeded in defeating the Viet Cong insurgency by the spring of 1972.

Can guerilla warfare be beaten?

The United States military has had little success in countering guerrilla warfare as part of an insurgency since World War II. The U.S. approach has been to use conventional forces which rely on high technology and massive firepower against low tech enemies who refuse to stand and fight.

• This paper focuses on developing ways to defeat the basic strategy guerrillas employ as part of an insurgency, through the examination of classic guerrilla warfare literature.
• Overall insurgent strategies, tactics, and operational considerations are synthesized and from these, strategy, tactics and an operational plan is developed to specifically counter the aims of the insurgent.

This examination then leads to some basic operational concepts of counter-guerrilla warfare. Guerrillas can best be defeated militarily using guerrilla warfare techniques. The major tools are psychological operations and effective use of intelligence assets.

Has anyone ever beaten Guerilla Warfare

Early history – In 512 bce the Persian warrior-king Darius I, who ruled the largest empire and commanded the best army in the world, bowed to the hit-and-run tactics of the nomadic Scythian s and left them to their lands beyond the Danube. The Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356–323 bce ) also fought serious guerrilla opposition, which he overcame by modifying his tactics and by winning important tribes to his side.

In 218 bce the Carthaginian general Hannibal faced considerable guerrilla opposition in crossing the Alps into Italy; he was later brought to bay by the delaying military tactics of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, from whom the term Fabian tactics is derived and who earned the surname Cunctator (meaning “Delayer”).

The Romans themselves fought against guerrillas in their conquest of Spain for more than 200 years before the foundation of the empire. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Guerrilla and quasi-guerrilla operations were employed in an aggressive role in ensuing centuries by such predatory barbarians as the Goth s and the Hun s, who forced the Roman Empire onto the defensive; the Magyars, who conquered Hungary; the hordes of northern barbarians who attacked the Byzantine Empire for more than 500 years; the Viking s, who overran Ireland, England, and France; and the Mongol s, who conquered China and terrified central Europe.

In the 12th century the Crusader invasion of Syria was at times stymied by the guerrilla tactics of the Seljuq Turks, a frustration shared by the Normans in their conquest of Ireland (1169–75). A century later, Kublai Khan ‘s army of Mongols was driven from the area of Vietnam by Tran Hung Dao, who had trained his army to fight guerrilla warfare.

King Edward I of England struggled through long, hard, and expensive campaigns to subdue Welsh guerrillas; that he failed to conquer Scotland was largely due to the brilliant guerrilla operations of Robert the Bruce ( Robert I ). Bertrand du Guesclin, a Breton guerrilla leader in the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), all but pushed the English from France by using Fabian tactics of harassment, surprise, ambush, sudden assault, and slow siege,

Has Guerilla Warfare ever failed?

Irish War of Independence and Civil War – IRA Flying Column during the Irish War of Independence, The wars between Ireland and the British state have been long, and over the centuries have covered the full spectrum of the types of warfare. The Irish fought the first successful 20th century war of independence against the British Empire and the United Kingdom,

After the military failure of the Easter Rising in 1916, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) used guerrilla tactics involving both urban guerrilla warfare and flying columns in the countryside during the Irish War of Independence of 1919 to 1922. Many were inspired by the fabled exploits of the 1799–1803 guerilla campaign by Michael Dwyer after the failed 1798 rebellion,

The chief IRA commanders in the localities during this period were Tom Barry, Séumas Robinson, Liam Lynch, Seán Mac Eoin, and Tom Maguire, The IRA guerrilla was of considerable intensity in parts of the country, notably in Dublin and in areas such as County Cork, County Kerry and County Mayo in the south and west. Despite this, the Irish fighters were never in a position to either hold territory or take on British forces in a conventional manner.

Even the largest engagements of the conflict, such as the Kilmichael Ambush or Crossbarry Ambush constituted mere skirmishes by the standards of a conventional war. Another aspect of the war, particularly in the north-eastern part of the province of Ulster, was communal violence. The Unionist majority there, who were largely Protestant and loyal to Britain were granted control over the security forces there, in particular the Ulster Special Constabulary and used them to attack the Nationalist (and largely Catholic ) population in reprisal for IRA actions.

Elsewhere in Ireland, where Unionists were in a minority, they were sometimes attacked by the IRA for aiding the British forces. The extent to which the conflict was an inter-communal one as well as war of national liberation is still strongly debated in Ireland.

The total death toll in the war came to a little over 2000 people. By mid-1921, the military and political costs of maintaining the British security forces in Ireland eventually proved too heavy for the British government. In July 1921, the Government of the United Kingdom agreed to a truce with the IRA and agreed to meet representatives of the Irish First Dail, who since the 1918 General Election held seventy-three of the one hundred and five parliamentary seats for the island.

Negotiations led to a settlement, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, It created the Irish Free State of 26 counties as a dominion within the British Empire ; the other 6 counties remained part of the UK as Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army split into pro- and anti-Treaty factions with the Anti-Treaty IRA forces losing the Irish Civil War (1922–23) which followed.

• The partition of Ireland laid the seeds for the later Troubles,
• The Irish Civil War is a striking example of the failure of guerrilla tactics when used against a relatively popular native regime,
• Following their failure to hold fixed positions against an Irish Free State offensive in the summer of 1922, the IRA re-formed “flying columns” and attempted to use the same tactics they had successfully used against the British.

However, against Irish troops, who knew them and the terrain and faced with the hostility of the Roman Catholic Church and the majority of Irish nationalist opinion, they were unable to sustain their campaign. In addition, the Free State government, confident of its legitimacy among the Irish population, sometimes used more ruthless and effective measures of repression than the British had felt able to employ.

1. Whereas the British executed 14 IRA men in 1919–1922, the Free State executed 77 anti-treaty prisoners officially and its troops killed another 150 prisoners or so in the field (see Executions during the Irish Civil War ).
2. The Free State also interned 12,000 Republicans, compared with the British figure of 4,500.

The last anti-Treaty guerrillas abandoned their military campaign against the Free State after nine months in March 1923.

Is terrorism a guerrilla warfare

Problem of Definition – Guerrilla, Terrorist, Political, Transnational Examining the growing problem of terrorism, this article emphasizes the distinctions between guerrilla warfare and terrorism and the nature of political terrorism and transnational terrorism.

Although the terms guerrilla and terrorist have been used interchangeably by many authors, they have different meanings. Guerrilla warfare is violent action taken within the normally accepted rules and procedures of international diplomacy and laws of war. In contrast, the violence in terrorism is directed mainly against civilian targets, and the terrorist’s goal is publicity.

To determine whether a particular event constitutes guerrilla warfare or terrorism, the motives, targets, acts, and effects must be considered. Genuine guerrilla organizations often lapse into acts of terrorism. A terrorist organization becomes an international terrorist organization when its goal involves more than one nation or deals with persons living in more than one country.

The countries of origin of the membership, structure, and officers of an organization and the sources of support for the organization may also serve to define it as international. In addition, acts which take place against foreign officials and diplomats or carriers engaged in international commerce are also a part of international terrorism.

The sharp increase in political terrorism – terrorism used as an instrument of political action – is one of the most disruptive elements in the contemporary western world. Political terrorism includes indiscriminate terrorism, discriminate terrorism, mass terrorism, and transnational terrorism.

• The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the best example of a transnational terrorist organization.
• The PLO example shows that transnational terrorist methods can achieve some success.
• Although nations cannot eliminate terrorism, they can take such measures as making no deals and minimizing publicity about terrorism.

Sixty-five footnotes are provided. : Problem of Definition – Guerrilla, Terrorist, Political, Transnational

What is the difference between gorilla and guerrilla warfare

Summary: Gorilla or Guerrilla? – These two words sound similar, but it is important not to confuse them:

Gorilla is a noun that refers to a large ape living in the forests of central Africa. Guerrilla is an adjective describing a type of irregular warfare. It can also be a noun that refers to someone engaged in this type of fighting.

These words have very different uses, which should help you tell them apart. But don’t forget that we have expert proofreaders on hand to help with any aspect of your writing, from word choices to spelling. Get in touch today to find out more.

What is an example of a guerilla fighter?

Classic examples of guerrilla warfare include the attacks of more than 300 bands of French francs-tireurs, or snipers, on invading German troops during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871); the Boer raids against British troops that were occupying the Transvaal and the Orange Free State during the South African Wars (

Why are they called guerrilla?

Just because they’re guerillas doesn’t mean they’re primitive. The Sioux and Apache tribes of North America had something profound in common with the colonists who established the United States. Like the Viet Cong, the Spanish irregulars who frustrated Napoleon, and the Afghan tribesmen who defeated the Soviet army and continue to challenge U.S.

and NATO forces in our own day, they were guerrillas. The word “guerrilla” comes from the Spanish for “little war,” used to describe Spain’s 1808 uprising against Napoleon’s troops, but such a way of fighting is as old as human civilization itself. Guerrilla warfare is a rational response to overwhelming and organized force, the means by which the weak can frustrate, wear down, and overcome the strong, whether they be British troops at Lexington and Concord, French and later American troops in the Mekong Delta, or Hitler’s Wehrmacht in Yugoslavia.

It is the great merit of Max Boot’s study of guerrilla war that he stresses the venerable history of this style of fighting, starting with Thucydides’s account of how the Aetolian highlanders used their maneuverability and knowledge of the local terrain to defeat the hoplites of Athens in 426 BC.

As soon as organized states began to form and to equip themselves with disciplined armies, they were opposed by enemies fighting in an older style. Boot writes, “Throughout most of our species’ long and bloody slog warfare has been carried out primarily by bands of loosely organized, ill-disciplined, lightly armed volunteers who disdain open battle.

They prefer to employ stealth, surprise, and rapid movement to harass, ambush, massacre, and terrorize their enemies while trying to minimize their own casualties through rapid retreat when confronted by equal or stronger forces. These are the primary features both of modern guerrilla warfare and of primitive, pre-state warfare.” This does not necessarily imply that the guerrilla is a primitive.

• The surviving gold artwork of the Scythians of the sixth century BC demonstrates that they were a sophisticated people who preferred the nomadic existence that was suited to their grassland steppes.
• When the Persian emperor Darius demanded that they stand and fight, the Scythian leader Idanthyrsus replied, “We Scythians have neither towns nor cultivated lands, which might induce us, through fear of their being taken or ravaged, to be in any hurry to fight with you.

We shall not join battle unless it pleases us.” Armies are large and complex organizations, with training academies for officers and their own medical, financial, judicial, and logistics services; and they are usually designed to fight other armies of similar type.

• Sometimes armies develop the necessary skills and doctrine in time to prevail over unconventional forces.
• At the turn of the last century, the British eventually defeated the Boers of South Africa, brilliant guerillas of Dutch descent who had trekked north from the Cape Colony in a vain attempt to escape British rule.

And British troops were able to quell a mainly Chinese and communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. But they lost to the Jewish irregulars in Palestine in the 1940s, and spent 30 grim years after 1968 convincing the Republicans of Northern Ireland that democratic politics would be preferable to continued urban guerrilla warfare.

• Given the extraordinary range of experience the British Empire accumulated in fighting various guerrilla campaigns, Britain’s armies have a better record than most.
• But their leaders could still be convinced, as in Palestine, that the possibility of success was too remote and too expensive to justify the effort.

The Obama administration, having reviewed the results of a decade of war, seems to have made a similar appraisal of the current Afghan campaign. Professional military men usually find such calculations difficult to make. They are trained to apply force and accept casualties in order to achieve military victory.

A great merit of democratic government is that the politicians can overrule the generals and apply political considerations to the overall strategy, which is what President Richard Nixon did in Vietnam, reducing the American investment in the draining conflict and leaving another president to swallow defeat in 1975, when Saigon finally fell.

Sometimes the politicians find it hard to persuade the soldiers. French president Charles de Gaulle was confronted with a military coup and then a prolonged terrorist campaign by the Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète, a French paramilitary group, when he gave up on the cause of French Algeria in 1961.

For a political leader, the decision to pursue or to end a war comes down to a cost-benefit analysis: Can the political price of military defeat be afforded? In wars of choice, when little save prestige and moderate strategic advantage are at stake, the price is often worth paying if the opponent is sufficiently determined to keep inflicting costs and casualties.

Opponents tend to understand this, and their target is not simply the enemy forces but their political will. This was how Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh fought the French and the Americans. It was also how George Washington endured the winter at Valley Forge, before going on, with help from the American guerrilla Francis Marion, known as the Swamp Fox, to outlast the British resolve to continue the war.

1. Boot makes the neat point that the term “public opinion” made its first appearance at this time, in the works of historian Edward Gibbon.
2. As Boot comments, “A parliamentary government could not prosecute a war that did not enjoy popular backing.”) For the guerrillas, the stakes are usually much higher than they are for their enemies.

The guerillas are fighting wars of necessity rather than of choice, against foreign (or heretical) domination or intolerable rule. The Swamp Fox wore a leather hat with a silver plate engraved with the motto “Liberty or Death.” But one contradiction inherent to guerrilla warfare is that in order to survive, guerrillas usually have to impose at least as draconian a level of discipline and punishment as their opponents do.

The guerrilla cannot afford to give quarter to traitors, spies, or deserters; and atrocities against enemy troops and their civilian sympathizers are common in waging war on the enemy’s morale and political will. The line between a guerrilla and a terrorist can be a fine one. Marion, a guerrilla of genius who had learned his trade fighting the Cherokees, raided British and Loyalist outposts, attacked their supply trains, and eluded capture by fleeing to the South Carolina swamps.

Directed by South Carolina governor John Rutledge to target escaped slaves who had joined the British in return for their freedom, Marion was also ordered to execute slaves who had helped the British with supplies or intelligence. It is worth recording that at least one of Marion’s own slaves ran away to fight for the British, a detail excised from the hagiographic Hollywood film The Patriot (2000), in which Mel Gibson’s character was based in part on Marion.

Another contradiction is that in order to achieve full success, the guerrilla usually has to build a conventional army, or at least find an allied army for the final, decisive battles. It was North Vietnamese regulars who took Saigon, not the Viet Cong, and regular French and American forces who forced the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, just as it was Wellington’s troops who finally ejected from Spain the Napoleonic armies that had been shredded by six years of guerrilla war.

And a hazard of guerrilla fighting is that organized armies can themselves exploit guerrilla tactics, as was done, for example, during World War II, when Britain’s Long Range Desert Group sent commando troops deep behind German lines in North Africa to destroy warplanes at their bases, a trick the British repeated in the Falkland Islands in 1982.

1. Britain wasn’t the only country to use such tactics during World War II: the Red Army fought a conventional war against the Wehrmacht while partisans behind German lines attacked the railways and logistics bases on which the Germans depended.
2. The lesson of the endless examples Boot cites is that guerrillas can be militarily defeated, if a conventional army is itself prepared to go guerrilla and form small, fast-moving units for hunting down the enemy, often with the help of local trackers and renegades.

Boot notes that in 1886, General Nelson Miles finally hunted down the Apache fighter Geronimo with “a picked force of 55 soldiers, 30 mule packers, and 29 Apache scouts” after “one of the most arduous operations in the history of the U.S. Army.” Boot made his name with The Savage Wars of Peace (2002), an accomplished history of America’s small wars that made him a useful source of advice for American generals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

1. Invisible Armies, after an exhaustive but brisk canter throughout the small wars of history, brilliantly sums up the lessons of the centuries.
2. Guerrilla warfare is deeply political, since the fighters’ lack of formal organization means they depend on civilians for food and intelligence.
3. The civilians thus become a strategic factor in the battle, wooed and also targeted by both sides, and sometimes removed from the battlefield altogether, as in the Boer War, when the British were finally able to defeat the Boer farmers by removing their wives and families to concentration camps.

As the cases of the Irish Republican Army and the Basque separatist force known as the ETA show, guerillas can sometimes be bought off with political concessions. But the conflict does not simply hinge on winning the hearts and minds of the local population from whom the guerrillas draw fighters and support.

• Just as important is the state of the people’s physical security and their assessment of which side is likely to prevail.
• Guerrillas must be fought tactically on their own terms, hunted down, denied bases and support, and forced to keep moving and to abandon (or kill) their wounded.
• Strategically, however, they are fought through the politics of effective local administration.

The British won in Malaya because they took the landless Chinese laborers from their shantytowns and installed them in well-run and well-guarded “New Villages” with medical services and sanitation, an arrangement that made the Chinese amenable to the daily searches that ensured that no rice was being smuggled out to the guerrillas.

1. The British dried up the sea in which the guerrillas swam, even as their own guerrilla-style troops hunted down the bands relentlessly, one by one.
2. When the Americans tried to do the same in South Vietnam, their good intentions were frustrated by corrupt local administrations that stole funds and supplies and extracted bribes or free labor from occupants.

The “strategic hamlets” cordoned off by U.S. forces became unpleasant for their inhabitants and thus counterproductive. Thanks to its experience against Iraqis and Afghans, and to the wisdom of thoughtful soldiers such as General David Petraeus (who was the driving force behind the excellent new U.S.

1. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual), the Army should now be well equipped to wage guerrilla warfare and to pursue the joint civil-military operations such conflicts require.
2. Ironically, it is seeking to do so just as American politicians appear intent on withdrawing from Afghanistan.
3. The public seems to have had quite enough of such distant fights, and the rise of a strategic peer competitor in China is focusing U.S.

military attention back on conventional strategies. This may be a mistake. An army often finds itself fighting a war for which it is not well prepared, since that is precisely the kind of war an intelligent enemy will choose to wage. And if there is one arena where the hit-and-run and clandestine tactics of the guerrilla seem likely in the future, it is the electronic swamps and jungles of cyberspace.

Why are they called guerilla fighters

Captain Nelson J. Anderson, Chemical Warfare Service – Original article published in April 1942 Download the PDF Download the original PDF In the latter part of October 1941, just after the Germans occupied Mozhaisk about sixty miles west of Moscow, a Russian peasant, Mikhail Balin, his wife, Irene, and their sons, Peter and Anatoly, held friendly family council and decided to become guerrillas.

According to press reports in a few weeks the four had killed five German officers and seventy-four soldiers, destroyed an enemy tank, twenty-one trucks and eleven ammunition carts and captured 1,200 grenades. This is merely one of numerous activities indicative of the importance of guerrilla warfare at the present time.

Because of the relative significance of guerrilla activities, their consideration in connection with other studies of military functions seems important. The Spanish word “guerrilla” translated literally means “little war.” Guerrilla warfare is sometimes called “partisan warfare” or “irregular warfare.” In general, the words “guerrilla warfare” are used to designate any military activity carried on by a comparatively small independent force or unit and irregularly conducted, with or without military organization, in connection with a regular war.

Guerrilla warfare was a part of major and minor wars conducted in ancient times and is reported in connection with most historical accounts of the wars of the past and the present. In ancient Palestine, for example, a Midianite army was successfully operating and making progress, until a Jewish leader, Gideon, selected 300 men with whom he made a surprise attack at midnight on the enemy camp.

To prepare for this attack, Gideon gave each man a trumpet and pitcher containing a burning torch. After he had stealthily placed his men around the camp, he gave a prearranged signal when all blew their trumpets to arouse the sleeping enemy and then simultaneously broke their pitchers to produce a great din and flare (ancient pyrotechnics).

The effect of these tricks was to startle and frighten the Midianites who fled in confusion until they crossed the border into their homeland. An illustration of the effect of the guerrilla warfare of modern history can be cited from European chronicles. On account of the activities of the Spanish Irregulars, the French officers had no rest in 1813; indeed they were only relieved from the crushing pressure of Wellington’s operations to struggle in the meshes of the guerrilla and insurrectional warfare.

In Biscay, the communication in the field was so intercepted that confusion often resulted; contributions could not be collected; magazines could not be filled; fortresses were endangered; the armies had no base of operations; the troops, sorely pressed for provisions, were disseminated and everywhere occupied.

1. The harassing effect of the guerrillas contributed greatly to the ultimate defeat of the French.
2. American history reveals various examples of guerrilla warfare.
3. One insurmountable obstacle in the path of Cornwallis was attested by the historian John Hyde Preston who describes the well known activities of the Swamp Fox.

In part, he writes as follows: “But more terrifying than the approach of Greene was the presence of a young man whom Cornwallis had never laid eyes upon hut who was always lurking near him in the woods and swamps with a band of terrible horsemen. The Earl would send out a scouting party and the scouting party would not come back, and another would go in search of them and find their bodies, stripped of clothes and weapons, lying in the thicket.

• It was the work of the Swamp Fox! But there was never a sign of that swift enemy—never a sign except a little troupe of mounted men, suddenly appearing on a distant hill, standing and watching and then riding off again.
• Marion’s band seldom numbered over a hundred men, some black, some white, all crouched over sleek horses.

They would come without warning, like a suddenly waking wind, attack with awful ferocity, and then be gone as silently as they had come. They melted the loyalists’ pewter plate to make their bullets, forged their swords from old saws and scythes, and stole the steeds they rode upon.

1. When Marion ambushed the Prince of Wales’ crack regiment, his men had but ten bullets apiece; yet they broke the enemy, captured their arms, and drove them back into the swamps.” Later in American history in the Civil War, numerous examples of guerrilla warfare are recorded.
2. As an illustration of one important partisan war, we quote from a lecture on “Strategy” given by Colonel Arthur L.

Wagner: “Yet, though the Army of the Cumberland had all the prestige of victory, though it was well organized, well trained, well equipped, and in excellent morale, we find it remaining stationary for six months. What was the cause of this? Rosecrans was not lacking in energy or enterprise; the President was impatient, popular sentiment demanded an advance.

It was simply because the ceaseless activity of Morgan and Forrest, who destroyed railroads, burned bridges, blew up tunnels, and captured convoys, rendered Rosecrans’ communications so insecure that it was not until sufficient reinforcements, principally cavalry and mounted infantry, could be provided to guard the routes of supply that the Union Army was relieved from its paralysis and enabled to resume the offensive.” Guerrilla warfare has grown increasingly more important until at the present time it is indispensable in the conduct of the war in China and is probably indispensable in Russia also.

Guerrilla warfare, operating in conjunction with regular warfare, has enabled the poorly equipped, partly trained Chinese to hold the well equipped, highly trained Japanese in check for about five years so that the invaders have not reached their goal in China.

1. The invaders announced that they expected the Chinese population in the invaded sections of China to support their new masters.
2. Actually, however, they have allowed the Japanese to occupy only territory within rifle range of military garrisons and guarded supply routes or lines of communications.
3. The Japanese military regime divided occupied China into 1033 districts, each governed by a Japanese officer or some one presumably sympathetic with the Nipponese designs.

Actually, however, it has been reported that the Japanese completely control only 97 of these districts; they partly control 193; and the Chinese completely control 743. In the occupied regions of China, the Chinese men and women who are members of guerrilla bands usually engage in their vocations by day and operate against the Japanese at night, destroying supplies, killing isolated small units of Japanese and disrupting supply lines and lines of communications.

1. Guerrilla warfare in all of China is highly developed and fairly well organized under the leadership of Mao Tzu Tung and Chu Teh.
2. Among the basic principles of organization for guerrilla warfare in China are the following: In the first place, there is the national spirit of China.
3. The Chinese are willing to sacrifice themselves in their opposition to Japanese domination.

The people can no longer endure any more from the Japanese imperialists, and they are engaging in revolutionary efforts to rid themselves of the Japanese menace. The Chinese leaders consider guerrilla warfare a part of national policy. As a consequence of a reasonably well united China, the people have supported guerrilla activities in a cooperative manner as one aspect of total war, obtaining thereby what the Chinese term the “quality of mass” (large number of warriors).

• Thus, a large number of small groups of warriors operate with some cooperation among themselves and as units of a national army contributing to the general program of wearing out the enemy.
• According to the principles of their own instruction, the enthusiasm of the Chinese people for their cause must not be allowed to wane.

Guerrilla units in China have political and military leadership. This is true regardless of the source or size of such units which (1) may organize locally or (2) be formed from an admixture of regular troops with groups of the people or (3) may consist of regular army units intact.

A unit may consist of a squad of a few men, a battalion of a few hundred men, or a regiment of several thousand men. The guerrilla leaders sought are those who are unyielding in their policies, resolute, loyal, sincere and robust. Among qualifications demanded of leaders are that they be well educated in revolutionary technique, self confident, able to establish severe discipline, and able to cope with counterpropaganda.

Indeed, these leaders are depended upon to be models for the people. As war progresses, it is felt that good leaders will gradually overcome faulty discipline, strengthening and increasing combat efficiency. The Chinese distinguish the organized guerrilla warfare from the unorganized, which they say cannot contribute to victory.

They class the unorganized as banditry and anarchism, a haven for disappointed militarists, vagabonds and bandits. They admit the existence of corrupt guerrillas among the Chinese people, often including persons who, under the guise of guerrillas, indulge in unlawful practices. To eliminate such illicit activities, the Chinese leaders try to give their people suitable education and training.

The success already attained by the Chinese is attributed in part to their ability in guerrilla tactics, which are based on alertness, mobility, and the attack. The tactics are adjusted to the enemy situation, the terrain, the existing lines of communication, the relative strength, the weather and the situation of the people.

The general directions issued by the Chinese leaders for guerrilla activities are to deceive the enemy, attack weak points, deliver lightning blows, attack, withdraw, and seek a lightning decision; to harass the enemy when he stops, strike him when he is weary, pursue him when he withdraws, harass his outposts, his flanks, his rear.

At his vulnerable spots, he must be attacked, dispersed, exhausted and annihilated. In particular, the Chinese objectives for guerrilla warfare against Japan are (1) to organize the military strength of the Chinese people, (2) to maintain the partisan warfare as an important part of the entire war, (3) to diminish the extent of the territory under enemy control, (4) to assist the regular army and (5) to attack the enemy in every quarter, every effort being made without expectation of producing the decision, but supporting all major military efforts of the regular war.

Under Chinese planning, regular operations and guerrilla hostilities are interdependent. Guerrilla operations during the anti-Japanese war may temporarily become its paramount feature, especially insofar as the enemy’s rear is concerned. However, if we view the war in its entirety, there is no doubt that the regular forces are of primary importance because they are responsible for producing the decision.

By its contribution to the entire war effort, guerrilla warfare assists the regular forces in producing the favorable decision. Orthodox forces may, under certain conditions, operate as guerrillas, and the latter may, under certain circumstances, develop to the status of the former.

However, both guerrilla forces and regular forces have their own respective development and their proper combinations. Although the two kinds of warfare are conducted most effectively in a cooperative manner, the tactics normally used in each are different, and according to the Chinese fundamental principles the following chief differences exist: The basic tactics of orthodox operation are constant activity and movement; in guerrilla warfare it is to strike suddenly and then retire.

The general features of reconnaissance, partial deployment, general deployment, and development of attack that are usual in mobile regular warfare are not common to guerrilla warfare. Unlike the regular warfare, guerrilla warfare never involves the transformation of a moving situation into a positional defensive situation.

There is in guerilla warfare no such thing as a decisive battle; there is nothing comparable to the fixed passive defense that sometimes features orthodox war. Not only Chinese partisan warfare, but also Russian partisan warfare is very important, especially in the region of Russia now occupied by the Nazi.

In August 1941, Marshal Semyon Budyenny appealed to his people in gist, about as follows: With fresh forces our powerful Army each day deals heavier blows to the Nazi bands. To help the Red Army, a mighty people’s force has arisen throughout the entire territory occupied by the Germans.

• To you men and women of the districts occupied by the Nazi, we speak.
• Those who are able to handle arms—join guerrilla detachments.
• Create new ones.
• Annihilate German troops, exterminate them like mad dogs.
• Derail trains.
• Disrupt communications.
• Blow up ammunition dumps.
• Not a single bushel of grain is to be left for the enemy.

Mow as much as you need for the near future and destroy the rest. Destroy the plantations of industrial crops—beet-root, rubber plant, flax. Exert all efforts to fight the enemy and destroy him. Budyenny’s appeal has been heeded and we may get a picture of the consequences from the following narrations of happenings in German occupied territory.

• Two German tanks fell behind the main Nazi force.
• They were captured by a guerrilla detachment under the command of Red Armyman Kivskik.
• In connection with this seven motorcyclists were killed.
• A guerrilla force under a commander named Znamensky raided a German headquarters, destroyed a tank, captured two staff cars and killed four soldiers and four officers.

Near the town “O,” a small Soviet force armed only with one automatic rifle and seven ordinary rifles stopped 15 German ammunition trucks one night by placing spiked planks across the road. When the guerillas opened fire the surprised Nazis fled to the woods.

1. Russian women participate in guerrilla activities.
2. In one case, a Nazi officer was billeted in the house of a 70 year old woman collective farmer, Bogdanova.
3. The old woman was forced to sleep in the hall.
4. One day the sounds of battle came from the village street.
5. Rogdanova realized that the Russians were approaching.

She took an axe, noiselessly approached the seated officer, and hit him in the hack of the neck. Just then two Nazi soldiers came into the house. They snatched the axe from the old woman’s hands, dragged her to the yard, hurled her on the snow and poured benzene over her.

They were prevented from setting fire to her by Russian men. One Nazi was killed and the other captured. A young girl, Katya, acted as a scout for an important detachment and frequently took part in fighting. Another, Julia, recently gave information which enabled her comrades to repulse a Nazi attack on the village of “N” and capture a rich haul of German equipment.

Women and children keep the guerrilla lighters informed of every action of the Nazi forces. In Kharkov, the Germans captured three wounded Russian soldiers. They were tortured and hanged from telegraph poles in the village of Kolomaky. Posters affixed to the poles threatened shooting for anyone who attempted to take the bodies away for burial.

To cause greater fear, the Nazis stationed guards armed with automatic rifles at the poles. Thus it remained for two day and two nights. On the morning of the third day the bodies of the Russians had been removed and the German guards were hanging on the poles in their places. The Russian guerrillas keep in touch with Red Army headquarters by radio and on one occasion reported the position of a new German air field for bombers.

Red airforce planes promptly bombed the field, destroying 24 Nazi planes and about 3,000 barrels of gasoline. The Russians in the Ukraine give important assistance to the Red Army not only by their military activities, but also by the aid they render to the intelligence service of the Soviet forces.

• Regular communication exists between most guerrilla units and the Red Army regular troops.
• Ukrainian guerrillas have their own newspaper, Za Rudiansku Ukrain, which is widely distributed in enemy occupied territory.
• This newspaper tells of the exploits of the guerrillas and serves as a means of communication between them.

As of 12 February 1942, a guerrilla detachment reportedly commanded by Medvedev, had carried out about 50 raids behind enemy lines during the last four months. Among their declared accomplishments against the Nazis are: (1) Having learned that the German 576th Engineer Battalion was to move to a new place, the guerrillas lay in ambush.

1. When the enemy column approached, the partisans opened fire, destroying two staff cars and several troop trucks.
2. They captured the battalion standard, staff, documents and a large quantity of arms.
3. The Germans suffered considerable losses.
4. 2) South of station “Z,” these guerrillas blew up a railway bridge; then, taking advantage of traffic congestion, they opened fire with rifles and machine guns and showered a troop train with grenades.

(3) Soon after that, Medvedev’s detachment raided a town, killed, several policemen including the chief of police, burned down a woodworking factory turning out material for enemy fortifications, and captured a large quantity of arms, 600,000 rubles in Soviet money and 3,800 German marks.

4) The Soviet guerrillas gathered and turned over to the Red Army command information on movements of enemy units and the location of centers of resistance. The native inhabitants assisted them. A woman collective farmer guided guerrilla detachments for miles among German units, risking her life and those of her family.

Residents of one village hid wounded guerrilla, Kashcheyev, and nursed him to recovery. (5) The detachment grew tenfold in four months. During this time, Medvedev’s men captured two small towns, blew up three troop trains, killed 2 generals, 17 other officers and 407 soldiers and noncommissioned officers.

Ten ammunition trucks, nine light bombers and four locomotives were destroyed. Three railway bridges and seven large wooden bridges were blown up and telegraph communications destroyed in many places. Russian guerrillas are organized by their voluntary acceptance of regulations which they have prepared in cooperation with the Red Army leaders.

The guerrilla oath which follows, signifies in brief, the major responsibilities of Soviet partisans: “I, a Red guerrilla, swear to my comrades in arms that I shall be brave, disciplined and merciless to the enemy. To the end of my days I shall remain faithful to my country, my party, and my leader Stalin.

If I break this sacred oath, may severe punishment be meted out to me at the hands of guerrillas.” To prepare individuals to fulfill the requirements set forth in this oath, the Soviets have planned a training program including the following subjects: Map reading, first aid, sanitation, patrolling, sniping, use of weapons; how to negotiate terrain; street fighting; woodcraftsmanship; and how to develop the important personal qualities of quietness, confidence, alertness, control, and attention to detail.

Some Russian guerrillas have received such training; others are receiving it; still others are operating without special training. However, experience has taught that efficiency in the use of guerrilla tactics can be immeasurably enhanced if the individual and the group are trained and organized in advance pf enemy penetration and around adequate bases, which are created to maintain protracted struggle behind enemy lines.

By bases here is meant (1) human centers of resistance, (2) the mobilization of the genius and resourcefulness of the people, and their proper use in loyal support of the armed irregulars. Russian guerrilla tactics to an extent more vast and successful than military experts outside of Russia have understood or conceded, have critically interfered with the enemy’s time calculations, have repeatedly cheated his multiple penetration tactics of decisive success and have prevented his effective organization and exploitation of conquered resources.

In general, although guerrilla warfare has not been the primary means of settling great military conflicts, it has had an important contributing effect on the final results of many a major war. The present war is probably no exception. Partisan warfare has unlimited possibilities and may be conducted on land, in the air, or on the water.

What does guerilla warfare do

Guerilla Warfare is defined as operations carried on by small independent forces, generally in the rear of the enemy, with the objective of harassing, delaying, and disrupting military operations of the enemy. The term is sometimes limited to the military operations and tactics of small forces whose objective is to inflict casualties and damage upon the enemy rather than to seize or defend terrain; these operations are characterized by the extensive use of surprise and the emphasis on avoidance of casualties.

Full-text of guide This bibliography includes student papers, military reports and bibliographies that you won’t necessarily find in the catalog. Its focus is on historical documents with a few contemporary sources thrown in. This bibliography is meant to give a history of guerilla warfare in general and does not focus on any particular time period or conflict.