Nations in Arms: Five Armies that made Europe

By Barney White-Spunner

I enjoyed reading this book. It blends military and political history over a period of 1700 years to bring us five examples of the building of armies: armies that successfully furthered the interests of their states in Europe at the time and also lasted as an integral part of their nations’ capabilities for many decades, in some cases for centuries. General White-Spunner, a previous GOC 3 Div and Commander Field Army combines his extensive experience of how armies work with an analysis of armies’ relationships with the nations they serve. His choice of armies is instructive: the ones I expected were Cromwell’s New Model Army which was the foundation of the modern British Army, and secondly the Prussian Army in the Napoleonic Wars which gave us Clausewitz, manoeuvre warfare, staff training and ultimately a formidable foe in WW1 and WW2. The less obvious choices (to me) were the earlier 4th Century Roman Army of Constantine the Great and the Ottoman Army of Sultan Mehmet II which took Constantinople from it eleven centuries later and lasted until the end of WW1. The fifth example in the book is the US Army of 1941 created for the defeat of Germany, which has stayed in being since WW2 as the most formidable army on the planet.

The readerly detail in the book gives us many historical vignettes of enduring relevance: for instance, the organisational reforms in Constantine’s Army, the battlefield tactics of Mehmet’s Ottoman Army, the loyalty of the Army created by Cromwell during the subsequent Restoration and Glorious Revolution (exemplified by White-Spunner’s own Regiment, the Blues & Royals), the investment in building a high quality officer corps in the Prussian Army and the sheer scale and speed of the creation of the US invasion force in WW2; one stat I enjoyed was that the US Army in 1939 had only six operational tanks but by 1945 American industry had produced 88,000 more tanks. The influence of pay, welfare, leadership, healthcare, national service and technology - even uniforms and military bands - are all cited and compared.

From these five examples of armies, General Barney deduces five principles for building successful armies and offers them in our situation today rebuilding the British Army for the challenges of an increasingly dangerous world: he writes about combat effectiveness, the respect and support of the nation, adaptability and industrial strength. And he takes swipes along the way at the ineffectiveness of British defence reviews, funding, recruiting, procurement and R&D. Time will tell whether the British Government will invest in the Army sufficiently to meet the escalating challenge. I would suggest that for our Corps – which sadly baulked in the 1980s at leading the Army into the IT era – the book prompts consideration of our degree of proactivity with respect to areas such as cyber, digital targeting and space: the professional, industrial and tactical dimensions of these technologies will be seminal if the British Army is to be relevant in future conflict.

Reviewed by Dr Richard Davis

Published by: Osprey, 14 August 2025. 352 pages.

ISBN-13: 978-1472872982