Comandante Che: Guerrilla Soldier, Commander, and Strategist, 1956–1967

The victory of Fidel Castro's rebel army in Cuba was due in no small part to the training, strategy and leadership provided by Ernasto Che Guevara. Despite the deluge of biographies, memoirs and documentaries that appeared in 1997 on the 30th anniversary of Guevara's death, his military career remains shrouded in mystery. This work offers an objective view of Guevara's record as a Guerilla soldier, commander and strategist from his first skirmish in Cuba to his defeat in Bolivia eleven years later. Using new evidence from Guevara's previously unpublished campaign diaries and declassified CIA documents, Paul Dosal reassesses Guevara's impact as a guerilla warrior and theorist, comparing his accomplishments with those of other guerilla leaders with whom he has been ranked, including Colonel T.E. Lawrence, Mao Tse-Tung and General Vo Nguyen Giap. This reassessment reveals that Guevara was often underated as a conventional warrior and theorist. Guevara achieved his greatest military by applying a conventional military strategy in the final stages of the Cuban Revolution, orchestrating the defensive campaign that held off the Cuban army in the summer of 1958. As a guerilla commander, he scored impressive victories in ambush after ambush in Bolivia, but in winning the battles he lost the war. He violated most of his own precepts during the Bolivian campaign, compelling analysts to question the validity of both his strategies and his command skills. Through he is credited with developing foco theory, Guevara never attempted to advance a new theory of guerilla warfare. He was a fighter, not a theorist. He wanted to defeat American inperialism by launching guerilla campaigns simultaneously in Asia, Africa and Latin American, but his tricontinental strategy resulted in failures first in the Congo and then in Bolivia. This book presents the full record of Guevara's successes and failures, separating myth from reality about one of the 20th century's most contraversial revolutionary figures.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS List of Maps Preface 1. Nobody Surrenders Here! 2. The Making of a Revolutionary 3. The Making of a Guerrilla 4. Comandante Che 5. All Guns to the Sierra 6. The Conquest of Santa Clara 7. Guerrilla Warfare 8. The Tricontinental Strategy 9. The History of a Failure 10. Here I Am Adviser to No One 11. Not Another Vietnam Conclusion Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Paul J. Dosal is Professor of History at the University of South Florida.

Review :
“This is a solid, realistic study of a man, not an icon. As the title suggests, Paul Dosal portrays the complete Che Guevara, but, above all, he is unsurpassed in revealing Che the guerrilla soldier—the grunt, the guy in the mud, facing death and killing ruthlessly.” —Charles Ameringer, Penn State University “This outstanding work is the first comprehensive, objective, and truly professional study of the contribution of Che Guevara to the theory and practice of revolutionary guerrilla warfare in the twentieth century. It is based on a thorough and careful reading of the relevant primary sources—principally, Che’s voluminous campaign diaries, along with recently declassified CIA documents on his operations in the Congo and Bolivia.” —Neill Macaulay, University of Florida “He [Dosal] does not pretend to deal with Guevara’s personal life or his career as a bureaucrat in Cuba, but despite those deliberate omissions, if one could read only a single book about Guevara, this would not be a bad choice.” —Henry Butterfield Ryan The Americas “This is an interesting and clearly-written study of Che the soldier and strategist, intended ‘for both scholars and the general public.’” —British Bulletin of Publications “Comandante Che reflects years of richly detailed research; it attempts to address virtually every major controversy over Che’s relationship with Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, the Cuban Communist Party, various Latin American parties and guerrilla movements, and the Soviet and Chinese leaderships whose ideological disputes framed Guevara’s commitment to global armed struggle against the United States, imperialism and capitalism.” —Brian Loveman HAHR