Customer Reviews

The Bicycle in Wartime: An Illustrated History

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Very well written, lots of historical photos. A pleasure to read

Detailed text and amazing photos show the use of bicycles by armies ranging from the Civil War to Vietnam to Yugoslavia.

After a brief introduction about the development of bicycles, Dr. Fitzpatrick sets forth an interesting history of the use of bicycles by the military in peacetime and in war, and by civilians in wartime. Dr. Fitzpatrick discusses the successes and failures of bicycle use in wartime in very understandable terms. An interesting aspect of the book is its identification of the different forms of resistance to bicycle use raised by various military leaders, as well as the "mental blinders" that led to some to seriously underestimate the capacity of the bicycle to be used effectively in warfare. The book has fascinating and thought-provoking discussions of the successful use of bicycles by the Japanese Imperial Army in the conquest of Malaysia and Singapore during World War II, and by the Vietnamese against the French and American military forces in Indochina.

Dr. Fitzpatrick is candid about the limitation of his ability to access more foreign-language resources (Preface at p. ix), but that limitation does not seriously detract from the quality of this book. The book is very readable and very informative. This is a history book that a non-historian can enjoy, and a student of history can find very useful. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a different perspective on bicycles, military history, or practical examples of human ingenuity and problem solving.

Great study on a very neglected topic. Text is supplemented with some great photos. I hope a volume two will come out someday!

Until I came across this book, I never realised how much use the military has made of the bicycle, in several countries and in several very different theatres of war. In fact it clearly played an important role in the Boer War and the First World War. Written off by the American military as early as 1900 and by most military theorists in the 1920s, it proved important once again during the Second World War (especially for the Germans) and was vital to the success of the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu and of the Vietcong during the Vietnam War.

Fitzpatrick's history is based on voluminous research and his narrative is compelling. We are given a clear picture of the history between the 1890s and the 1970s. He is good at weaving the history of the machine into his more general accounts of the warfare. I was particularly taken by the debate in the early period as to whether the bicycle was best used by the infantry or the cavalry, and whether it could ever replace the cavalry; and by his account of how bikes helped the Japanese to capture Singapore in 1942.

One word of warning though: the book is illustrated and the illustrations do not show up well in the kindle edition.

I wasn't sure what to expect. As a avid cyclist I was definitely interested to see how the bicycle had been in employed in war. The author starts from the beginning of the bicycle being invented and moves forward at an easy pace. Interspliced into the text are photos from each period of time discussed. The photos show well on the Kindle and are themselves fascinating. The author seems to take a somewhat optimistic view but the work is throughly researched. A good read on the subject.