The Road from Kandahar: The Politics of Retention and Withdrawal in Afghanistan, 1880–81

Liberal victory in the 1880 general election in Britain resulted in the decision to withdraw British and Indian troops from Kandahar following the messy conclusion of the Second Afghan War. An acrimonious public debate resulted on the future of a British presence in Afghanistan. It was not just a question of the assessment of any external Russian threat to British India, and the relationship with a seemingly unstable Afghan neighbour, but also of the security of the North West Frontier against tribal incursions, and the general sense that events beyond the Indus would have an impact on the potentially fragile acquiescence of ordinary Indians in continuing British rule of the sub-continent. In the process, the highly divisive issue of Kandahar also raised fundamental questions about imperial defence, strategic choices, the costs of exercising military options, and the difficulties of disengaging from a conflict that had a lasting impact on the balance of policy calculation in Victorian Britain.

Charles Forrester, “Field Marshal Montgomery’s Role in the Creation of the British 21st Army Group’s Combined Arms Doctrine for the Final Assault on Germany, The Journal of Military History, 78:4 (October 2014): 1295-1320

This article empirically examines how British 21st Army Group produced a functional doctrine by late 1944. How much weight to give Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery in the outcome remains unclear despite significant scholarly literature. This article shows his openness to the “bubbling up” of operational methods from subordinate commanders. He closely managed this process, actively promulgated its output, and determined when he had gleaned sufficient feedback from it. His doctrinal contribution to the British Army’s final push against the Germans developed into British doctrine for many decades, and many Commonwealth countries followed the British lead. This article examines its roots.