CUBAN ARMED FORCES 1950 - 1959

[lion_of_judah]

I'm hoping someone can help me locate any information on the armed forces of Cuba and Castro between 1950 & 1959. What i do know is that the Cuban armed forces before the communist take over numbered around 40,000 men and well equipped but no Order of battle also I have been able to find a number on Castro's forces roughly 8,500 but no OOB, so any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Fidel_Helms]

John Lee Anderson's biography of Che Guevara had a lot of good information, although it only covered the Cuban Revolution, so it doesn't go back as far as 1950.

[MPHopcroft1]

A guerilla force isn't likely to keep all that detailed an OOB, and any infromaton foud is likely to be inflated by one side or the other -- certainly there haven't been many truly netrual studies of Castro's revolution because, even after 50+ years, absolutely no one is able to obervse it neutrally.

[Fidel_Helms]

ORIGINAL: MPHopcroft

A guerilla force isn't likely to keep all that detailed an OOB...

Here I think you're wrong; Castro was pretty well organized and had numbered and named formations. I have also never read that the (post Batista) Cubans have tried to inflate their historical numbers- pretty much everything you read, including things based on Cuban sources, is frank about the number of armed rebels being pretty small.

Getting back to the main point, the Cuban theory of guerilla warfare is notable for its emphasis on having fixed bases of operation. This caused Cuban sponsored guerillas to fail miserably when Cuba later tried to export its revolution- the Cuban model simply didn't work in countries where either the terrain was less harsh than in eastern Cuba or where the armed forces were not grossly incompetant.