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Paul Moorcraft
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Total Onslaught: War and Revolution in Southern Africa Since 1945 Kindle Edition

by Paul L. Moorcraft (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 out of 5 stars 32 ratings
The end of the Second World War may have heralded peace in Europe but conflicts in Southern Africa were about to begin. The imperial powers were weakened by the cost of war and a string of wars challenged colonial rule in countries such as Namibia, Angola and Rhodesia. Once independence was achieved, civil wars between rival factions unfamiliar with democratic principles resulted. Liberation movements such as those in South Africa demanded self-rule and end to Apartheid. Tribal feuds, corruption and the ambitions of dictators led to more conflicts such as the protracted fighting in the Congo. These were wars that ran on until both sides were exhausted often only to be re-kindled after short periods of uneasy peace. The cost in human and material terms has been devastating and in too many cases remain so. Economic development has been frustrated and the result is often poverty, abuse and genocide. The Author who knows Southern Africa as a native is superbly equipped to tell this fascinating if tragic record.
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  1. Print length
    487 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Pen & Sword Military
  4. Publication date
    August 30, 2018
  5. File size
    36.2 MB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Professor Paul Moorcraft has frontline experience reporting on over 20 years, from A-Z, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, as a correspondent for print, radio and TV for nearly 40 years. He is currently Visiting Professor at Cardiff University and Director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis, London.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07GLML1CR
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pen & Sword Military (August 30, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 30, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 36.2 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 487 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 32 ratings

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Paul Moorcraft

Paul Moorcraft

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4.6 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Mark Oxley
    5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece of personal insight and strategic understanding
    Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2018
    Professor Paul Moorcraft has written what will undoubtedly be recognised as the definitive work on war and revolution in Southern Africa over the last 60 years. It is also his masterpiece in his writing on Southern Africa. This book is a must-read for anybody interested in the political and military history of Southern Africa. It is a military history as well as a political one and the military detail is impressive. As a former instructor at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England and having also taught at the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College, Professor Moorcraft is uniquely qualified to describe the broad picture of South African military strategy in the region. When these qualifications are combined with his own personal experiences and insights as a front-line war correspondence in Southern Africa, they make for a remarkable and compelling book.
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  • Scott Bailey
    5.0 out of 5 stars Book
    Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2023
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    Good book well written and easy to follow the military history of South Africa and its many conflicts in the region few photos and maps
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Amazon Kunde
    3.0 out of 5 stars book is much too detailed
    Reviewed in Germany on November 17, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    would be interesting if author could restrict himself to about one third of actual content. In addition his focus is on what happened in southern Africa and neglects mostly that (one again) the USA is mainly responsible for all the shambles occured and still getting worse in southern Africa.
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  • joy
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great read!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Total Onslaught - War and Revolution in southern Africa since 1945
    By Paul Moorcraft (Pen and Sword Ltd UK 2018)

    During the heyday of UDI Rhodesia,South African apartheid and the fight for independence from Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique, enormous press attention was paid to these struggles - especially during the period 1960 to 1994.
    The world was witnessing a titanic convulsion, the end game of an entire post world war 11 era of decolonisation. When Nelson Mandela calmly strolled through the gates of prison in Cape Town to freedom in 1990, it was a defining moment in time following decades of retreat that had seen European countries abandon their colonies and empires across the Far East and throughout Africa.

    The common theme was that these colonial exits all occurred on the anvil of the cold war, and dozens of countries were the scene of proxy battles whose belligerents were supported by Moscow and Washington.

    Hundreds of books narrating these events saw the light of day, tens of thousands of newspaper articles, and then quite suddenly, sometime around 1995, it all went quiet on the southern Africa front. Few books appeared. World attention switched to other theatres of concern and what had seemed so important just a few years before suddenly seemed unimportant. The cold war ended in 1989, the Soviet Russian empire dwindled both in actual size and influence, and the 'end of history' was prophesied.
    Of course that prophecy turned out to be nonsense and communist threats were replaced by religious threats and the world has entered a completely new phase of history, but one that only makes sense when all the threads are drawn together.

    This is the inestimable favour that Prof Paul Moorcraft has done us with this erudite, wide ranging, insightful and brilliantly timed book which revisits that far off landscape through fresh eyes. Prof Moorcraft has been more at home in his other books describing events through his own experiences as a journalistic witness. He was at the front line of early events in Afghanistan for example, travelling through 'bandit' territory on the back of an ass, notebook in hand. Total Onslaught on the other hand is a thoroughly academic work, deeply researched (with an impressive bibliography) but written in a very accessible style. The narrative carries us forward from the days of Pax Britannica, the 'winds of change', the colonial wars in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique and Rhodesia and finally to war in South Africa itself, concluding with the overthrow of President Mugabe and the end of the Zuma era. Bang right up to date.

    Prof Moorcraft's speciality is military history and tactics and his analysis of events is offered through the prism of a military historian. Time and again the reader is struck by a fresh insight into the reasons behind events which have seemed familiar. The military industrial complex in South Africa is credited with playing a much greater role in the actual ending of apartheid than the hapless revolutionary forces of the ANC and Moorcraft is careful to cite respectable authorities in this regard. The sense of pragmatic military calculation having been behind so much of the 'action' in smoky backrooms where policy was worked out by the Afrikaner nationalists is reinforced throughout Moorcraft's analysis. The public may have thought starry eyed ideologues were the driving force of change, but in fact it was the hard-headed strategists in the French, British, Portuguese, South African, Israeli, Cuban and Soviet military that called the shots and laid out options leading to all the subsequent important political choices.

    If you want to understand the backwash of the Arab Spring, the reasons for its failure in most cases, events in Syria and elsewhere in the middle East and South America, then 'Total Onslaught' provides a useful analogous template. If this reviewer has a quibble or two it is that Prof Moorcraft could have devoted more space to Afrikaner revolutionary leaders like Bram Fischer. The late Stan Uys, doyenne of South African journalists in London, who knew the CP leader personally, assured this reviewer that Fischer was a hard-line Stalinist, recruited to the party during his Oxford days, a diligent communist who opposed South Africa's entry into the war against Germany because of the Berlin-Moscow pact. It was only when Germany invaded Russia that he withdrew his opposition to South African military intervention. The SACP angle might have been amplified a bit given that the innate multi-racialism of the CP - and Bram Fischer himself - was the driver that persuaded Mandela that the ANC too should become multiracial in the interests of sustaining the tripartite Alliance - CP, ANC and Labour.

    'Total Onslaught' is highly recommended. A must-read for anyone seriously interested in the post war history of southern Africa.

    David Willers (ex Cape Times diplomatic correspondent and Natal Witness editor)
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  • The Media Matters
    5.0 out of 5 stars The go-to book for some time to come
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2018
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    Total Onslaught is a very welcome addition to scholarship on conflict in Africa, a continent rapidly emerging as of pivotal strategic, political and economic interest to Europe. If there is one thing the British have done well, it is reporting on Africa and particularly war in Africa. In an era, however, when "Africa hands" are rapidly being replaced by regional stringers or by foreign correspondents who fly into Africa for a few days and then return to Europe or Los Angeles, Paul Moorcraft's book amply demonstrates the value of Africa specialists - or this case, informed commentary on the wars of southern Africa. This book will become compulsory reading not just for aspiring foreign correspondents but also in western (and African and Chinese) military academies. It is not just that Moorcraft brings so much to the table - a background as a military instructor at Sandhurst and Staff College as well having been a jobbing journalist and academic - but he has actually spent so much time in the field at the heart of the conflicts about which he writes. This is borne out by the details in the book and the many gritty hands-on photographs of soldiers and insurgents throughout the book taken personally by the author. Moorcraft has spent many years criss-crossing southern Africa and has known presidents, guerrilla leaders and spy masters across the region - obtaining, for example, the first interview with the soon to be President Robert Mugabe as well as spending weeks in the bush with Mugabe's bitter enemy RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama in Mozambique. It is also a pleasure to note that the endnotes add ever more colour to this study. Moorcraft was already the leading historian of the Rhodesian bush war (itself a fascinating chapter in the book): Total Onslaught establishes him with a similar claim with regards to conflict in post-war southern Africa.
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  • Rome Reviewer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Totally readble onslaught
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 2, 2018
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    At first heft (as in picking it up off the shelf) “Total Onslaught” may feel like a daunting juggernaut. A few pages in, and anyone with even a passing interest in the struggles and politics that shaped southern Africa will find it well worth the effort. With his trademark deft and readable touch, Paul Moorcraft weaves scholarship, painstaking research and military expertise into an engrossing narrative of sweeping historical perspective. That’s in no small measure because the author is no mere armchair academic. He’s also an accomplished professional journalist who’s met personally with most of the major players, and got his boots dirty and his adrenalin pumping in the danger zones about which he writes, most conspicuously Angola, Namibia, Rhodesia and Mozambique.
    This latest work by one of the most prolific chroniclers of conflict and the politics and social forces that drive it is arguably his best yet, destined to be a go-to reference work (helped out by generous appendices and acronym translations) on the last seven decades of southern Africa’s turbulent history.
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  • Blue Cat Cottage
    5.0 out of 5 stars Another unputdownable book by Paul Moorcraft
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    Fascinating and full of detail you won't find anywhere else. And humour! I love Paul Moorcraft's books.
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