Terrorism as Third Front: The Radicalization of the New Left in Italy and West Germany

Which factors were responsible for the radicalization of the 1968 protest movement? Why did Germans and Italians develop such a fascination with the notion of guerilla warfare? And why were the terrorist organizations that developed there so long-lived? The reasons are partly to be found in unresolved problems of postfascist societies. New Left activists criticized the lack of domestic democracy and idealized the “anti-imperialist” fighters in the global south. But as this chapter shows, radicalization also developed through transnational interaction in the European public spheres, specifically through a mixture of solidarity and rivalry between the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades. The history of German and Italian left-wing terrorisms was, therefore, closely connected by multiple symbolic ties from the first shootings to the final showdown of the kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer during the German Autumn of 1977 and of Aldo Moro just a few months later.

From Small Wars to Guerrilla Warfare: Imperial School of British Military Thought During the Interbellum

The Interbellum era was marked by the competition of various interpretations of guerrilla warfare and small wars, which were a practical expression of rebel activity in the colonies and on the outskirts of the British Empire. Discussions in that regard reflected both theoretical and doctrinal contradictions and the bureaucratic rivalry between the departments responsible for its internal security and the confrontation between the military and civilian authorities over the boundaries of their responsibility to preserve colonial order. The evolution of the meaning of the concept of “guerilla warfare” within the British military thought in the first half of the 20th century is demonstrated by highlighting the stages of the process, historical reconstruction of the levels of discussion of this topic in a professional environment, and identifying the degree of mutual influence of its basic provisions in the face of budgetary constraints and new challenges to colonial rule after the First World War. This approach allowed to specify ideas about the place and role of the army in the functioning of the internal security system of the British Empire at the final stage of its existence. The analysis of the semantics and content of the “guerilla warfare” concept between two world wars makes it possible to apply a new approach to the issue of disagreements between the military and civilian authorities over the choice of the military and political course in the conflicts of this kind. Thus, the identified differences may be viewed as a result not of the bureaucratic differences only, but as the absence of the unified understanding of the “modern rebellion” problem among the military as itself.

Myśl wojskowa Mao Zedonga

Mao Zedong’s Philosophy of WarThe aim of this article was to do some critical analysis of Mao Zedong military writing. Our method was to intepretate his manuscripts and compare his thesis to thesis of top marxists thinkers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg about the war and warfare. In next step we also compare Mao strategic thought with thought of classical masters of art of war like Carl von Clausewitz and Sun Zi. Finally we did some comments on political aspects in Maoist theory of war. In result we draw some conclusions. Firstly we can say that Mao did nothing new in marxist philosophy of war and his dialectics of war were vague and vulgar. Secondly we can say that his military writings was mostly influenced by Clausewitz through soviet military thought rather than Sun Zi. In the other hand his theory of guerilla warfare was to some extent original and finally we can describe Mao’s strategic thought as some kind of progress in twenty century art of war.